Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Where Social Media Gets Unsocial

1/17 Update: Just had to add these links:
http://hub.tm/?RHCDB
which sums it all up...
And this from David Pogue:
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/twittering-tips-for-beginners/
(er, note: his article was written days after my entry appeared! Maybe I have a future?... Then again, we're all frustrated and expounding on tech-headaches.)

Just I'd love to wish you (all two of my faithful readers) a Happy New Year. But I'm not sure if you'll ever see this because I haven't really figured out how to enable my blog to be fed for greater consumption. I just can't digest all the new social media bites and bytes. And I'm hungry for more scoop. There's definitely a food theme going on here that I have to stop.

Anyway, a funny thing happened to a friend of mine on the way to my apartment. I'd sent an evite to a few folks for some holiday fare. (yes, more food.) Now, Cecilia is a making social media her career choice. She has uncovered all kinds of cool tools and sites and is starting to tweet, twitter, blog, maybe vlog, who knows. But she called me two minutes before my soiree and said she couldn't find my apartment because she'd lost my evite.

Today, I tried to RSVP to HER holiday party, but I cannot, for the life of me, figure out which application/platform/email address she'd sent her party non-Evite invitation to, so I couldn't find the invite. NON-e-vite because she discovered the not-your-grandfathers-electronic-invitation-service dejour and used THAT service and I can't remember the name of it. Purple something. Wait - I looked in my Web history and found it!! Purple Trail.

Remember the days when using email we were nostalgic about snail mail and phones? Now I'm nostalgic about email! I guess I'll just pick up the phone and actually call her.

So, if you're reading this that means I'm still alive and writing and you're alive and reading, so I wish you all the very best for a wonderful 2009 filled with lots of happy moments when we all reach out and touch people.

Post Script: I have NO idea if those on the alert for my latest postings received multiple alerts about this one, but in the spirit of full disclosure since social media is notorious for transparency and crowdsourcing critics I revised this twice to keep the crowds happy. Sorry for the repeat blast. But real live friends are more...or at least as...important as the virtual ones.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

OY! In an attempt to make party planning fun . . .and organized . . .purpletrail.com ALMOST has it down. Evite.com has MANY MANY detractors at this point, so I used a new and highly touted service.

However, what happened to us with BOTH services and ANY kind of internet app where you have to sign in or receive info is the main problem with having too many ways to "reach out and touch someone."

Also MOST people are not yet used to the massive amounts of info that hit us when adding such interactivity to the mix. Too much clicking can be BAAAAAD.

IN THE OLDEN DAYS, yeah, like a couple of years ago, you buy invitations, and boom, ya send 'em out. NOW it's this whole sturm und drang with ads on the invites, where the heck do you click for more info, and why can't I find the list of what I can bring . . .or the invitation itself!

For the record, I had NOT forwarded to my text messages, although that would have been a GREAT idea had I thought to do it when I got the invite originally. Duh . ..

So there I sat at my computer and on my TREO on my WAY to the party even after it had started frantically searching for the EVITE in my Yahoo Bottomless Pit of an INBOX. It's not the first time I use keywords to try to find emails I KNOW I have somewhere in there and they don't show up. HMMMM, maybe it's time to reorganize my email "filing and storage system." Calling 411 for E.B.'s address solved the address problem and I was one of the first revelers!

As for the next party invitation method? I'll be turning 45 in April . . .Stay tuned . . .