My Adventures in Social Networking

Suddenly, I am a social networking fool.

I have had two MySpace sites for a while--one for the band, Steel Pennies, and the other for the Altona Grange Bluegrass shows that David produced this fall. I just kind of go through the motions with those, periodically uploading new photos, approving comments and friend requests, removing songs as per the request of disgruntled band mates. I found that it had become a little boring.

But then things picked up when I set up a profile on Linked In. I kind of liked that one--decided to get it going for job hunting. I caught up with a lot of old coworkers and enjoy exploring where folks are and what they are up to. I had lunch with Scott Martinez, who used to work for me 6 years ago. He found me on Linked In, and a week later we were sitting in a Mexican restaurant, howling over our adventures in the corporate world. Then I got folks who I worked with to write recommendations for me--now that was an ego-enhancer! Stephanie, Jon, Ted, and Mike Kallet all took good care of me.

From Linked In, it was almost a natural progression to decide that I needed a Facebook page. I enjoyed putting it together, as I did my other profiles. Once I had that baby up and running, I was further delighted by two things. David Okay decided he would have one, too. And everyone on his side of the family is also on Facebook. Now we IM and write on each other's walls, and comment on each other's pictures--for me, living so far from family for so many years, it has been wonderful.

Now, as of today, I am tweeting. I set up Twitter about two months ago, but never did anything besides get the account going. Lo and behold, this morning here comes an email from Twitter telling me that GoodBlueGrass is "following" me. After wondering what Paul was doing on Twitter, I got myself organized and began to "follow" other folks, too. I even figured out how to compress the picture I wanted to use for my profile, and how to link Twitter to Facebook--awesome!

I am having so much fun.