Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Internet ponderings

Luck would have it that right when I log in to write a new post about web related stuff, Google comes out with its new Blogger template design tool and let's me change how Muchentuchen looks. The tool, btw, is really cool: It gives the user a whole bunch of options and is very easy to use. So what do you think?

Another side note: I wonder how many of the posts I've written over the last two years have started with "so" or "anyway". I'm sitting here wanting to get to the point of what I wanted to share, and those are the only two ways I can think of starting. Anyway... :)

Post graduation, I've been re thinking my aversion to facebook. Yes, the apps that were so prevalent when facebook got to Israel (hot potatoes, IQ quizzes etc) are still annoying, but with your friends all around the world, it is such an easy way to "keep in touch". SO now I make a point to log on to facebook at least once a day to see what's what.
The quotation marks in the paragraph above are because that now that I've started using facebook again, I've noticed that more than it allows you to stay in touch with people, it allows you to keep tabs on them. I see what's going on with my friends/ acquaintances, but I don't always comment about whatever it is they are doing, and when I do, those friends don't always reply. Bottom line is that rarely can I say that I'm engaged in a conversation with my friends in a conversation about their lives.
Another facebook inspired thought is on the dilution facebook has caused to the greeting "happy birthday". It used to be that you had to make an effort to remember your friends' birth-dates and then make another effort to connect with them on that day to with them a happy birthday. Now via facebook that whole process has become much easier, so much so that people send birthday greeting to people that they only marginally know. As someone who has always believed that birthdays should be celebrated (because everyone deserves a special day of their own and not everyone can have a notional holiday) I'm a bit aggravated by this whole thing, and yet a few days ago I too sent a Happy Birthday message to someone who I might of only talked to twice at most in my two years at JGSM.

I've also been giving a lot of thought lately to my internet personality, that is - if someone were to Google search me and only see me as I put myself out there on the web (via LinkedIn, facebook, this blog, etc.) what would they think of me? More importantly, if that person was a recruiter or a hiring manager at a company I want to work for, would they perceive me as the insightful marketer/ strategic thinker I think I am.
To that end, one of the things I'm doing is maintaining my LinkIn profile and being active in the groups I'm in there. This requires me to stay even more informed with what is going on in the industries I'm interested in. So my Google-Reader is working overtime (and here's an interesting piece about why sharing matters), and I am spending a whole lot of time just on reading what other people are saying about stuff. The problem is that all that staying informed takes up so much time, that I don't find the time to do things like write here!

What to do? What to do?


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