I’ve been meaning to get this analogy off my chest. That feeling has become more apparent when I try to explain this concept to my friends. My very first experience of the Internet was through American Online. I must have been 15 years old, living in my parents house, and not having very much money. My brother and I would spend hours on AOL surfing the web and playing mechwarrior within the safe restraints of the AOL application. “You Got Mail” would ring ever-so-often and we’d chat it up with our other cellmates in various child-predator-rooms chatrooms. It wasn’t until a coworker at Walgreens started referring to AOL as “the Play-play Internet” that I realized that I may have been in a Matrix and didn’t know it.

After some weeks of getting hackled about being on AOL, I started to ask him questions on what his internet experience was like. He told me that he connected to the Internet through an Internet Service Provider (ISP), opened Internet Explorer and went to town. I thought to myself, “That’s it!?” I tackled with the concept of using an email client, instant messengers, IRC chatrooms, and other things that didn’t come in some sort of bundled package. Well; I had enough knowledge to realize that AOL was NOT the route for me and convinced my dad to switch to Bellsouth. Till this day I’m not sure how I was able to convince him. Some little teenager whining about the restrictions of AOL verses the freedom of a real ISP.

How Does This Relate to Facebook

I’m glad you asked that question… I started out my social media adventure through Twitter, Identica, MySpace, etc. When Facebook finally opened up to the rest of the world I joined in, but didn’t really do anything with it. When Facebook picked up more interest from the world I noticed an increase in friend requests from my old high school friends. I began to chat with them and fell into the cycle of having one or two intense conversation and then the rest of the time just glancing at their latest status update and gaming spam.

Later on as my activity in Facebook diminished, I noticed that my news feed became more of a sermon from Sunday Chapel as more of my friends that found religion felt it to be their civic responsibility to encourage their followers with words of encouragement using the Word of God. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not an active or lazy (agnostic) atheist, but after a while I got real burned out with skipping those posts.

Seriously! How Does This Relate to Facebook!?

The more I’d start cross-posting from the various social media platforms I’m apart of (Ping, Seesmic, etc) I noticed that the replies I got from my Facebook friends could be categorized as social media noobs. Then I started seeing people putting hash tags in their posts and other twitter-related things. I found it cute.

I then noticed that if I wanted to get a comment or response on something I posted, I’d have better luck posting it on Facebook since most of the people in my friend’s list actually know me, compared to Twitter which consists of more Internet Friends. From those experiences I drew the conclusion that Facebook is a box, a social media Matrix of sorts. It’s safe and simple enough for grandma to join the social media revolution and it gives the user the impression that they are up-to-snuff on what’s hip and trendy in the vast, ever-changing world of social media (wow! that was a run-on sentence).

In the end; I don’t think I’m a social media expert by any means. Obviously; if I was truly THAT important then I’d have no problems getting my followers on Twitter or other micro-blogging platforms to interact with me on every single post I submit. Facebook is good for what it does. This is primarily my conclusion to an observation. My interest in Facebook fluctuates every quarter; that’s because I’m a fickle man.

Here’s my take on etiquette using location-based social platforms. Since I’ve only used Foursquare on my Blackberry 8820, well.. that’s what I’ll talk about. I finally dived into Foursquare when I caught wind that it came out with a BB app. It was exciting and also a bit confusing. I don’t go out much (family guy with little kids at home), so there aren’t many opportunities for me to “check in”. So; in order to participate I started checking in to places on my normal commute to and from work. It felt weird since I realized that I can easily become mayor of these places. It seemed like an unfair advantage.

I found it very odd that I couldn’t find any guidance on Foursquare’s web site. I guess they wanted the guidelines to evolve on its own through the users. I did a Google search for “foursquare etiquette” and I’ve listed some sites below that do a good job spelling out the Do’s and Don’ts of checking in.

My Do’s and Don’ts

• When you check in, don’t post EVERYTHING to Twitter and Facebook. It’s bad enough people get junk posts in their feed all the time. Don’t become an enabler. Post it within the Foursquare environment – it was meant to take that kind of abuse.
• Configure your settings to only post to Twitter and Facebook once you’ve achieved badges or mayorship. This way, people will be exposed to the application, but not burdened by your constant check ins.
• Don’t check in at home or work. You will become mayor and it’s definitely an unfair advantage. No one will be able to catch up to you.

Ha-ha. I thought I’d have more, but that’s my list. Check out the references below for more detailed lists.

References

1. http://www.oldmedianewtricks.com/foursquare-etiquette-guide/ – this site’s post dominates the search results.

Today is the day, my wife – Katina Ferguson – is giving birth to our third child.  Her name will be Monica Valerie Ferguson.  We’re now at the Piedmont Fayette Hospital in Fayetteville, GA and things are looking well.  Our adventure started today at 1:10 AM when Tina’s water broke, from there it’s been getting the kids together, asking my brother and his wife to help, etc.  I’m posting to all my social networks (Twitter, Rejaw, Plurk, Pownce, etc) using Ping.fm and posting photos on Flickr and Facebook.

• www.ping.fm
• www.flickr.com/photos/fergatron/tags/birth/
• www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=50061&id=635938172

It is Done!

This blog post will be updated as information comes.  So; Monica Valerie Ferguson was born Friday, November 21, 2008 at 2:50 PM EST.  A whopping 8 pounds 1 ounce.

Visit us… ah… Not Really!

For anyone who’s in town, that we know of, come and visit.  We’re at Piedmont Fayette Hospital.  Call me for the room number!

What is Flock?  I don’t know… ha-ha.  Seriously; I’m not too clear, but I found it on my RSS feed today from LinuxInsider.  So far it looks great.  It’s a web browser targeted to users of social networks, heh – that’s me!  You can have a side tab with your friends from different networks and you can even click n drag pictures to them to quickly share. Sounds like fun.  It’s based on Firefox (win win) so I’ll try it when I get home.

You can find more information from Flock’s web site.