A Curious Progression

It's interesting to consider how my habits have changed online in just today's internet. When I say that, I mean what it has been since the advent of social networking sites. What it was when I first began online seems too primitive even to grant consideration now. My first step into social networking was on Myspace. By the time I had heard of anything like Friendster, it was already gone. On its successor Myspace, I diligently updated my status, mood and customized my page to the extent I knew how. So important was it to have a great background and song blaring out!

Before I even joined that, I knew of Facebook. It was engulfing the nation's colleges at the rate of a handful a day. It would leave its exclusion to schools behind soon enough. When I joined, it was with the zeal of the converted, and I was posting status updates throughout the day most days. Friends today who knew me then will confirm how annoyingly I flooded the site with a myriad of trivial thoughts and mundane updates.  I understand it was more than some could bear, and they 'ignored' or 'unfriended' me for my boorish behavior.

I then moderated, resolving to force myself to post just one a day. I managed it, albeit at first with difficulty. I found that the later-arriving force of Twitter made for an excellent release valve. I did my best to encapsulate the most important of what I had to say in a single Facebook update, letting the rest overflow to that refuge of hopeless cases. It seemed to work well enough, although I found a unique quality of competition on Twitter. There is, amidst the status updates (or 'tweets') status in having many followers. Getting more involved in it meant taking it personally that others did not take my words for the gold I thought them to be. It's common, for everyone talks and no one listens. Everyone writes and no one reads.

Now, with the writing I do for my blog and other purposes, along with all the actual living I do these days, I almost never post a straight status update on Facebook, and seldom do more on Twitter than post links to blog posts and replies to some of other people's tweets. I guess it's a good place that I've come to. It's all relative, but I do think that there's more value in the effort I expend on words that go into a blog than those that go to Facebook or Twitter.

Better still would be words that went into print or the more successfully monetized online ventures. I still harbor such ambitions, and so I don't know that I will attempt to re-ignite any enthusiasm in bite-sized, ephemeral literature. I head in the other direction. I aim for the grand, the substantial and the profitable. Here's hoping that it happens, because if it doesn't then I look long-winded, arrogant and delusional. The stakes are high indeed.