A place to connect, share and connect.
The email I received from Gina had a very simple subject line: "Hello." The body of the email was also simple, just a link without any other text. Ugh; spam. I knew immediately what had happened. Somewhere, she had clicked on a malicious link and all of her contacts received the same email.
You know you've seen it. That cringe-worthy photo from your friend's beach vacation that he's using as his LinkedIn profile photo. "What in the world is he thinking?" you asked yourself. "I'd never use a photo like that to represent myself online." Really, Ms. Look-at-me-and-my-super-cute-puppy?
It had been nagging me for months, though I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was. Things with my work have been going well and keeping me busy, but something didn't feel quite right. I know a lot of people, more than I've ever known at any other time in my life. I spend much of my day connecting with them in one way or another.
I finally gave in. I resisted the call to "upgrade" my profile on Facebook. Calling it an "upgrade" didn't fool me. I heard the buzz and read the complaints. Many of those you moved to the new format weren't happy. I knew, though, that my days of being able to remain on the old profile design were numbered. For the last few days, there has been a message at the top of my Facebook homepage,
You've taken the job of connecting with the right people online seriously. You've methodically built your professional network of connections on LinkedIn. You've added your family, friends, old classmates and co-workers to your list of Facebook friends. This is a wonderful way to stay in touch by keeping up with status updates and photos, but what if you want to send a private email to one of your connections?
Remember how excited you were when you learned that you could connect your Flickr account to Facebook so that all of your photos could easily be uploaded and shared with your friends? Or, how intrigued you were with the idea of posting every single update to all of your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn friends simultaneously?
For any normal person, not connecting online for a short while doesn't seem odd. In fact, it makes sense. When I notice that someone hasn't posted in a few days, I assume they are out and about living their lives. When a social media geek like myself doesn't post updates to Facebook or Twitter and too many days have passed since my last blog post, people begin to wonder if I've fallen off the Earth.
There was this little get-together for tech reporters at Facebook headquarters today. You may have heard about it. Whenever Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, summons an audience because he’s got something to announce about Facebook, life as we know it grinds to a halt. Or so it seems.
To my friends who have received the bossy emails from me lately, I'm sorry. I tried to be nice when I told you to change your password right away and delete all the posts you'd sent to your friends. I know you didn't like hearing about this. I'm sorry, but I've got to say, it's not me, it's you.
I'm a fairly self-assured person. Sure, I have days where I wonder about my place in the world or why, despite my best efforts, I continue to have jiggly arms. Still, most days, I'm confident of my abilities, my fabulous sense of humor, my remarkably average looks and my good fortune to know lots of killer-smart people. How, then, with all this self-confidence, did Facebook manage to hurt my feelings?