Phendrana Drifts

I’m sure most of my friends, and almost everyone who will read this post, has their own story of how they got started within the world of social media and what they’ve learned. But the Unknown Studio’s recent episode talking to Mack Male / @mastermaq as well as their first episode starring Brittney Le Blanc / @britl I continued my internal dialogue on how social media has become really one of the most important things in my life – and why.

This post is essentially a love letter to social media, thanking it for all it is done in my life – I’ve discovered restaurants, found new insights into life and my community, and met meaningful friends that otherwise I wouldn’t have.

Blog: This blog was my first real foray into any kind of social media, and I looked over my first few posts and I still for the life of me can’t remember what made me get into it. I know other than Allie and her blog, I didn’t know many bloggers in real life and it was a couple of years before I really knew someone who blogged regularly other than my wife and I.

What I do know is that as a result of the provincial PC leadership race of 2006 and watching my friend Dave Cournoyer’s blog daveberta take off, I realized that social media going to be powerful – regardless of the tools involved. Never before and never since has my blog been as widely read as that time, given that I guess I was one of a few who was willing to talk openly about that process and was kind of an insider. Admittedly, and this is a partial tangent, I feel that my participation in social media is far more influential and powerful politically than my time in a political party ever was, which helps explain my dissatisfaction with the partisan political environment.

When it was my only social media outlet, I spent a tonne of time on my blog – enough so that outside of video games it would be fair to say blogging was my primary hobby. And if someone hadn’t invented easier and more meaningful ways to spend, share and contribute online I would likely still be a blogger third to being a husband and a stepfather.

Failed and random events: I meant to keep this list in chronological order but some of the failed attempts at participation did not all occur before Facebook, in fact probably most didn’t. I can’t recall all of the one day accounts I opened at failed locations and relatively obscure outlets, but I’ve also tried and not really got the hang of other more popular things, like Flickr, most of the Google things social media-related like Buzz, GTalk, etc., neat things like deviantart and Last.fm as well as dozens of internet forums – I hate internet forums. Still, not until Facebook and my favourite tool Twitter did I find anything that came close to my blog.

Facebook: My Facebook story is the same as most – I signed up with my alumni account back when it was only for campus community members, quickly amassed many friends, and now have a very powerful and influential tool that I only occasionally pay attention to. All the same, if you read this blog you’re probably my friend, so look me up and add me.

Twitter: Twitter is really where I think my mind on social media radically changed – I see things happen first on Twitter, most of my best friends are on it, and I see it outpacing mainstream media in terms of power and influence. I am a huge Twitter proponent, and if anyone is going to claim to be plugged into their community they need to open the door to Twitter – at least here in Edmonton and Alberta at any rate.

And the fact that I bring up my geographic location is a big deal – prior to Facebook somewhat, but especially Twitter, my social media experience was always location independent. Occasionally I would get invites to events on Facebook that obviously depended on me being in that location when it happened, but Twitter has become my hyper-local web portal, and until I became a part of Edmonton’s Twitter community I never felt like an Edmontonian. Constantly I’m checking out hashtags like #yegfood to find new treats, looking up #yegtraffic to find out if I’m going to be late, seeing who my friends follow and who they mention to find new friends, and reading tags like #ableg to see what is making news politically here (I am, and will always remain a political nerd, so forgive my attention to that tag).

Podcasting and Video-Making: I love podcasts and user videos – the epitome of individuals moving from passive consumers of media to contributors and creators. Indeed, I think it is that shift that will be the most important over the next 10 years in my society – that people no longer expect to just consume but to create. Of course, there is the irony that I am massive proponent of things like podcasting and video creation and photography sharing BUT I don’t do it myself. At least not sufficiently to promote it here. But I want to.

My wife and stepchildren on the other hand relish in their opportunity to create online. They do it with wild abandon. And so do many of my friends. And while the quality is perhaps not always there, when someone I know does something online it has obvious and special meaning and interest – take the best Youtube video I have, as shown below:

If you didn’t know me, the video would probably be pretty average, even dull – but because it is me who is being terrified by his wife it is fantastically funny to my five readers and some of my friends. But sometimes quality isn’t lacking – take my favourite podcast, Hardcore History by Dan Carlin, especially his four part series on the Eastern Front of the Second World War, Ghosts of the Ostfront. I would stake those six hours of spoken word entertainment up against anything full fledged mainstream media production can do.

Foursquare and Empire Avenue: My newest adventures that seem to be progressing beyond an initial look is Foursquare and the beta of Empire Avenue. Foursquare ideally (and possibly entirely) needs a smart phone and allows you to check into physical locations and then advertise your location to your friends. Slightly scary? Of course. Stalker friendly provided you say yes to all friend requests? Yep. But I’ve run into people and arranged last second coffee or beers over it enough times to make me embrace it. I’m still waiting for a few more people to sign up, but I’m a fan of social media unlocking possibilities in the real world rather than limiting my real world contact by cooping me up in front of a computer. Add me, and if I check-in close to you, drop me a Twitter DM and we can meet up and laugh at the people who have no idea what that sentence meant.

Empire Avenue is in Beta but is merging many of these concepts and promises to monetize these concepts and through a virtual stock market puts value on your participation in social media and offers the chance to profit in virtual currency from you and your friends online activities. Neat! And upon reading that description that might suggest that it is a force behind driving me to blog. That wouldn’t be entirely correct, but it wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate.