Everything you wanted to know about social media but were afraid to ask

I have written more serious points of view on social media for large enterprise businesses (not on this blog of course) however this one is for individual (and absurdly comedic) purposes. This does not represent the views of my employer, my friends, people I’ve passed in the street, that guy over there, myself, or anyone else living, dead or undead

Twitter:
Before I understood twitter I just thought, “Isn’t that just my Facebook Status?” except none of my friends see it? It is and it isn’t. It’s basically getting every thought you ever had and removing your personal filter to share it with the world – oh, in 140 characters or less.

People have “Followers”: I don’t know, it sounds very David Koresh or Jim Jones like. Unless your Uncle Cracker, I actually think it’s an uncomfortable statement “hey – Follow Me”. I am sure saying you have followers (“to all my followers out there”) probably feeds our sense of ego and self importance in a way as we try to get more and more followers. Anyway, come follow me on twitter, I have some Kool-aide waiting for you.

Numbers seem to matter. Why? Who knows? Like everything else – when you have something of anything, you want more. I’ve seen people “boast” about having thousands of followers and in some cases “make fun” of those who don’t. Really? How old are we? Get over yourself (btw to those bragging people I say “Half of your followers hate you but follow you anyway). Those kind of statements bother me so I did a very scientific study of these people (see non-existent footnote for the study facts) and here is what I found. Sure, these people have thousands of followers but the actual breakdown is as follows:

- 25% are just people who say #I FOLLOW BACK and never EVER type anything else other than IFollowback.
- Another 50% are robots who have 0 tweets and end up spamming your email with messages about blogs that mention you.
- That leaves maybe 25% of the followers as actual people. BUT - 75% those actual people will never read or respond to your tweets because as I mentioned above – they hate you. By the way, it would be great if Kim Kardashian reaches out to these arrogant people with ONLY thousands of followers and says – “pffft”

Facebook
If Twitter is where you are honest to strangers, Facebook is where you lie to your friends. You talk about your life, keep up with friends and family, as well as evidently pretend to run and manage a farm and join the mafia.

"Friend Me". It is now part of our vernacular. It used to be – “Hi can I get your phone number”, then “Can I get your email address, now its “Friend me on Facebook”. Now we will see the phony facebook accounts replacing the phony 867-5309 number for Jenny (please someone get that reference!)

Define Friend please. Is everyone on your “Friend” feed really your friend? Were they ever your friend? Do they even know you? It seems like Webster needs a new definition of friend in the next edition of their dictionary (does anyone else even publish a dictionary?). I mean people have over 1,000 Facebook friends. Seriously? I don’t even know that many people more or less like them.

And I thought relationships used to be complicated. Facebook has added a whole new nightmarish complexity to relationships. Changing your relationship status seems to be the biggest decision you have to make. I used to ask a girl if she would "go out w me" (and once on tape). Now a days I think people stalk facebook status’s to see if the relationship status has changed. And if status has changed for one person in the relationship but not the other? Oh boy, hell hath no fury like a Facebook scorned. My recommendation, have an automatic alert go up when your relationship partner’s status has changed and auto-set to mirror to whatever they have put up.

Google +
So, Facebook got together with Twitter and after a crazy night out on the town (which was no doubt uploaded to YouTube) and out popped Google+. What, it happened another way?

Google + is like the Christmas present that I begged my parents for over and over for half a year and when I finally got it I never played with it.

I know Google+ hasnt arrived yet. How do I know, well I have yet to receive a twitter spam about someone said something about me in a blog or an email invitation from a Nigerian prince that is a can't lose financial proposal. Get with the times Google+!

So now you know the true secrets behind social media (yes I know there is more to social media than Facebook and Twitter (and you too Google+). I am sure with this wealth of knowledge you will now act more responsibly on these sites. Now go friend me on Facebook & follow me on Twitter and Google+ so I can make fun of Kim Kardashian.