Sorry to start this thread and not get back to it for nearly a year!!
I also am a newcommer to this social media thing: back some years ago when the general public started to hijack the internet, no real Info Tech pro had much business 'misusing' the internet.
I worked for a company in the early to mid 1990s that developed software and provided internet service to the public, so I got to see the internet go from about 6 real commerce web sites and Yahoo to what it is today. What people forget (or leave out of Internet history guides) is that one of the very first users of the internet - way before the flood of companies - was the porn industry. We were shocked at the shear number of porn-based sites vs the number of usefull sites back then. I remember thinking "here is the greatest thing humans have invented since the wheel, and it is being used for tribute sites for bizzare fetishes - what a waste!".
Early social media was more like bulletin boards - online clubs. Then came things like AOL and other all-in-one sites that provided service, portal service, membership bells and whistles. That is how the Info Tech civilians used the Internet in addition to commerse sites and things like Slipnot tribute sites.
Then eventually came what we recognize as social media (as we know it today). Enough people are using the Internet that it has become ingrained and even instatutionalized that it is both the telephone and shortwave radio combined: realtime and worldwide.
So withthis connective media, the means to take advantage of the widespread nature and pool of people lends itself for things like Facebook and twitter.
Facebook is a way for people to group together, keep tabs on each other, send messages, suggest people to others to be members of their friend lists, and allow for connected members to view each others friend lists to add to their own lists (I guess the theory being people we know might know each other but have lost contact with them). I have re-connected with people I have not seen for 30 or more years through simple searches, and even my own sister who lived in China for 10 years when I lost contact with her in the mid 1990s. All of my old Highschool is on it and its like a way to keep in contact. Not at all like the people who collect thousands of people they have no real connection with.
Twitter was hard for me to grasp at first, too. Basically it is similar to facebook (as you have lists of people you follow and people that follow you). If someone follows you on twitter, then whenever you broadcast your little 128 character message (called a tweet), then they all get it. Its a fast way to talk to hundreds or thousands with some little blurb of info. I keep tabs with a monster quasi-famous shreadder named Rusty Cooly who is from my home town through twitter. (I am one of a small number of his thousands he follows).
Both Facebook activity updates (from my 'friednlist'), twitter updates (as well as email, phone messages) and even phonecall all come to my android smartphone in realtime. I guess that makes me a whole lot of techno nerd...
Topic: Hoffman Amps Facebook page?? (Read 15342 times)