Do you ever think about how much of our lives are in “the cloud?”
Students at my college were big users of AOL Instant Messenger (oh so 2000!), and we religiously updated our away messages. “I’m sleeping.” “I’m writing a paper.” “Sexiled.” (Remember that one?)
After Sept. 11, 2001, during which I was in D.C., I began thinking a lot about my own mortality. For the first time, I realized that I could die unexpectedly. I would think, what if I died from a bomb on the Metro? And the next immediate thought was, “Who would update my away message?”
In 2007, I’d said on Poynter that journalists should be users of social media. (This is back when journalists were actually debating it. Now, it’s a given.) If we are to report on the world we live in, then we have to fully live in it.
But what happens when there’s a technical glitch?
My Facebook profile has been inaccessible for two days. The company is having some sort of problem, according to this message board thread. And people are getting upset.
One frantic user writes, “OMG!!!! I’m about to lose it…. My birthday is coming and I don’t want to miss my birthday wishes. This is really annoying!!! I’ve been waiting for 5 long and awful days….This is a serious issue. No one seems to care.”
I don’t know this user’s age, but I found her comment adorable and completely honest. Before you judge her, consider this: People communicate now via social mediums, some people exclusively so.
And when the medium goes down, we lose our social.
Spare me talk about the old fashioned way of communicating — face to face and via phone — and how it’s so much better. No it’s not. And if you think this way, you probably leave too many voicemails. (Voicemail is dead.)
In the capstone thesis class during my senior year of college, one student wrote her paper on social technology, concluding that technology only enhances the social qualities that we already have — thus, social people are even more social online.
To me, it is not an insult to wish someone happy birthday via text message. Go a few years younger than me (I’m 28) and the communication methods are even more drastically different. True story: My college-age younger brother’s home burned down last month. I learned about this via his Facebook status update.
I then communicated the news to another family member via e-mail, who then responded to me the next day via text: “WHY DIDN’T ANYONE CALL ME?” (This 40-something family member only texts in capital letters. We love him. He tries.)
Another example: My birthday this year happened to coincide with my first day as a non-journalist. It was mostly a lonely day of packing for my next adventure, interrupted only by jaunts over to my open laptop to read my birthday messages from all my friends. So great!
The day that I expected to be filled with the radio silence of losing my public voice was instead filled with dozens of messages. I was no longer a working reporter, but I still had friends. And those friends chose to share via Facebook.
I wouldn’t have it any other way, especially after having moved to a new city six times in the past 10 years. Keeping in touch is so easy, thanks to the social media that have become my lifeline.
There is just one upside to the fact that my Facebook profile is down: It freed me up long enough to write this blog post.
As someone just marginally older than you (29), its interesting in that I can relate to the person who who is 40+ and mad that they didn’t get a phone call. Context matters more to some people than to others. It’s also interesting to see how quickly the norm for communication mediums has changed across demographics.
Joe S., No I’m with you — sort of. I found it normal, for his generation, that he didn’t call. But then I realized how some people might be offended by happy birthday texts, and so I forgave him. To him, it was just normal. And his college age friends all found it normal too.
(He’s 20.)
Being only marginally older than Joe (30)…I find it interesting that some individuals feel it is acceptable to call out of work via a text message. What happened to calling the boss and leaving a real message or waiting until the office was open to tell someone personally that you will be out sick? Some of these communication differences are generational, but even some older generations (baby boomers) are starting to become active in the social networking world (facebook & myspace). Ahh…what the internet has done to us.
Hi Andrea.. It was me who wrote that comment. 🙂
My profile has been like this since Saturday or maybe Friday night.
I’ve sent over 3 bug reports and nothing!!!
I hope they’ll fix it today.. Because they acknowledged the problem on their Facebook Fan Page and the wrote: “We hope we’ll be able to fix it in the next 24 hours”
That gave me a little relief.
And maybe it is weird, but I LOVE the wall posts on my birthday and my friends’ wishes because many and many of my friends do not live in the same country as me, we can’t meet face to face, and we do not communicate through phone because of many probs we faced in the past… Unfortunately, Facebook is the only way we can keep in touch and communicate and they can’t even access my profile. I just hope my profile will be fixed as soon as possible.
I’m turning 20 btw 🙂 xxx
i still can’t access your FB page. is it still down or does it hate me?
No, it hates me. =) …There’s some sort of glitch. My poor husband thought that I blocked him.
I love reading my friends FB updates, and the fact that I’m not obligated to comment on their posts if i am not so inclined. Yet I’m one of those old (38) souls (or old farts?) that really appreciates hand-written thank-you cards. what does it all mean?
your poor husband! glad he found out that’s not the case. 🙂
of course, your husband probably already knows what i will be doing this weekend … and not because of FB … but because of a far faster news service than any social networking site! it’s called “andy.”