In the online world, if a web-surfer doesn’t like your first line… he’ll probably skip the rest of the post.
That being said, I realized I had very little (i.e. no) response to the question I posed yesterday. I’m going to try again.
Please reply with your thoughts to the following question:
What’s the one question you wish people would ask? Think about a story you like telling that not enough people ask about – it can be fun, nostalgic, heart-wrenching, emotional, humorous, honest, intelligent – anything, really. What do people need to ask you to get a sense of, well…you?
OK I know I’ve been lagging with my updates and that going more than 24 hours without writing is a sin in cyber-world, but please forgive me… I’m new to this.
Before I blog-away about different tech things I’ve discovered, plans that have been made to be tech-savvy, and the field research I’ve been doing to back it up…
I MUST address a major concern of mine. The problem? Twitter.
Last night, I was interviewing Rosie O’Donnell. Our banter was fabulous, she took my mic and started pretending to be me, and uhh…yeah, it was overall a great interview. We talked Twitter – she says she DOESN’T tweet – but may in the future, and tells me a little story about how Jimmy Fallon was sitting next to her at the Paul Simon concert last week, and he twittered away and well, she was jealous.
Anyway…Rosie and I got along wonderfully, and after the interview, I told her I was going to twitter about her that moment. So I busted out my trusty iPhone (the only “geek” errr…tech-savvy thing to my name PRIOR to this blog,) and tried to log onto to Twitter to alert the masses. Unfortunately… the Twitter site did not load. Therefore, I DIDN’T twitter about Rosie at that moment, like I had said I would. And before you Twitter fans start accusing the iPhone of just not working… I will say that I checked out other sites and updated my status there *cough*Facebook*cough*… and well, I had no problems.
So in conclusion, because of Twitter’s inability to load last night… I LIED to Rosie O’Donnell.
I hate liars.
P.S. You can watch as Rosie and I talk about her future, twittering and menopause… on Hollywood 411 on TV Guide Network, tonight around oh…9:50/9:55 pm. I think the show reruns at midnight too, so that means 12:50/12:55 am as well.
So as I’ve mentioned in my “Mission Statement,” joining Twitter is partially responsible for my new interest in becoming tech-savvy.
However, after more than 72 hours of Tweeting my life away, updating about Ashton Kutcher and Kate Bosworth Friday night, about this new blog Saturday, and further promoting this blog Sunday, I’m still not sold.
I definitely understand the concept of “micro-blogging” and what it potentially has to offer, but unless you’re Anderson Cooper, Barack Obama or P Diddy and have a slew of “followers,” I don’t believe that Twitter has the broad-reaching capacity that Facebook does – at least in my world. (I haven’t gotten to Diddy status yet, sadly.)
Proof? Well I have the link to this blog in both my Twitter and Facebook status. My blog stats tell me that a majority of visitors have been redirected from Facebook – I think I’ve had like, 2 views total that have come from Twitter.
Granted I have 1358 Facebook friends and only 16 Twitter followers…so I suppose I can’t hate on Twitter just yet. Maybe it just needs to be more widespread and mainstream to win over my love.
I actually went to a networking breakfast recently… put on my a friend of mine, Michael Broukhim, who started this website, http://www.totspot.com. It’s kind of like Facebook for babies. Brilliant concept, really. Anyway, I was only at the breakfast briefly, but attendees definitely touched on the whole Twitter phenomenon and addressed what makes it so appealing. Fun fact? Apparently the “twitter” user is an older crowd, compared with the average Facebook/MySpace user. Does that mean I’m just too “hip” for Twitter? Hmmm… (clearly, I’m trying to justify it any way I can.)
I’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts on Twitter versus Facebook… and well, social networking in general. Think we’re becoming too intrusive? Overly self-promotional? (Not that I’m one to talk…) Maybe we all just secretly want stalkers…
Alright so now that I have an established “space” in the cyber world, I figured I’d get a “dot-com.”
Ten minutes and $10 later… I’m now the owner of http://www.Geekin6Weeks.com
I had heard you could use your own domain for your WordPress blog.
Problem? I didn’t buy it from WordPress, – I bought it from GoDaddy (I guess all the marketing and sponsorship of USC football helped) and now I don’t know how to link the two so that I can just have this blog appear on that domain. WordPress instructions mentions something about adding DNS addresses…and well, I don’t get it and I’m trying grasp an understanding, but failing. There’s gotta be an easy solution to this, right?
Eeeek! Help. The next time I post, I’d like it to be on this new domain. That’s my goal for the next 24 hours.
Day 1. Make my goal public knowledge…(See Mission Statement.)
Use the internet to do this.
How? Start this blog. Main obstacle? Well…how to start a blog.
I spent hours doing research, debating whether to go WordPress or Tumblr… and well, WordPress won. It came off as more professional, and well, I’m all about taking this “becoming web-savvy” thing seriously.
So now that I have the blog out of the way… what’s the next step? I mean, I have 42 days to really understand the world wide web.
Well – that’s where the public comes in. I could customize this site, start promoting my goals via the internet, I could become addicted to YouTube and EBay and spend hours playing World of Warcraft (I hear insiders refer to it as WOW?,) I could join chatrooms and messageboards, I could twitter to my heart’s tweeting content, I could update my MySpace page (it hasn’t really been touched in ages, MySpace is so 2006…)
…But let’s be real. I’m challenging myself with this goal in mind so that I can understand how this stuff works, apply to it my field of interest (media, news, entertainment,) and ultimately have the knowledge to be, well… awesome. In a tech-sense.
So now that it’s out there, I really hope the internet world will embrace me and my objective, and help along the way so that I’m not absolutely clueless by 24.
Posted by Samia Khan 
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