Experiences with Social Networking

The social networking sites I have had the best experiences with to date are:

YouTube

hulu

blip.tv

blogging on Blogger and Word Press

Classmates

Google Notebook

Google Alerts

and to some degree Facebook

I like Google Notebook, but often forget about it since I normally just use my computer's bookmarking tool. I like that Google Notebook allows me to gather web sites and connect to them from anywhere. I need to use it more.

Facebook -- it is okay for me, a place to keep in touch with friends no matter where they move to, whether they keep or change their e-mail addresses, to get information on events from them, but for the most part, I don't think I even know the extent to which facebook can be used until I have explored it more. My age group does not tend to communicate that way and without a group of people to connect with through facebook, it can be an exercise in futility to have a facebook account.

YouTube is great. I love that it captures events, television shows, film clips, music, news -- all kinds of audio/visual files that inform. When trying to find links for my blog to song clips to illustrate what I was talking about, I was amazed at how many options there were to link to that would let people know what song I was referring to, what scene in a movie, what types of sites I am looking at, who people were that I was referring to. The creator of YouTube is a genius.

Blip.tv was a great resource to find out about in this class. I have many videos that I have created and want to share with other people. Particularly the video of my grandmother's life story in its entirety. I have been contacted by cousins from around the country who are interested in my wine business--particularly because it bears the name of our mutual ancestors. They have heard about the video that I made about the family history through my grandmother's life story, and they want to have a copy of the video to see for themselves and to share with their families. All i have to do is send them a link to my blip.tv videos and they can watch it. It is so simple and so convenient.

Blogging is the same thing -- I have had blogs on cooking, dating, traveling, becoming a wine importer, and now -- my experiences with social networking and my interest in the afterlife and how it is presented on television. It makes me feel as if I am being published. I always wrote in diaries, from the time I was 10 through my adulthood. And blogging allows me to keep writing diary type entries, but that can possibly be read by others. When I traveled to Hungary for the first time and stayed for 6 weeks, I blogged daily and wrote my thoughts and impressions and uploaded photos to share with my friends and family back home so that I wouldn't have to write to them individually and so that I wouldn't bore them with vacation stories and photos for hours when I got home. They could read about my adventures and see where I went by just logging into my blog. My parents are coming for two weeks this Christmas to stay with me in Manhattan. Their friends are excited to hear all about the experiences and activities-- and I told my mother we can set up a blog for her to write and upload photos to, so she can tell her friends to log on and read all about it. (This is a woman who doesn't understand what copying and pasting refers to in a Word document, so it will be an adventure just teaching her about social networking technology).

The last social networking site that has been useful to me has been Classmates (and another site similar to that -- the name of which eludes me right now). I graduated high school in 1975 and my friends are scattered around the country, and the world. Classmates and this other site have allowed me to connect with teachers, with old friends that i have not seen in 30-35 years, to help those friends make connections with people I keep in touch with myself, and to actually get together face-to-face with someone I had been close to in high school, but lost touch with for decades. Another aspect of these sites -- particularly the other one that is not classmates -- is that our school has its own page and there are different sections that illustrate things like the history of the town we grew up in, photos that illustrate locations that have changed or been demolished, photos of how the town looks now. It features information on reunions being planned and a way to reach out to people who are not easily reachable through friends who may be checking the site. It even has a page that features memorials to classmates (by graduation year) who have died--with a place for people to post memories related to that person, or for family members to tell about that person's life up until he or she died. It's sad, but even before the Internet, I remember my mother checking the obituaries to see if her friends were in there. This site at least offers a forum for remembering and for having some sort of connection and closure with others who shared those memories and friendships.

Diane