Tag Archives: social networking

MUSIC
I Hope This Gets To You. Seriously though…

So, despite the incredibly debilitating crappy weather we’re experiencing here in Middletown, love is in the air. Just wanted to share this video with everyone for a few reasons: 1. I’ve been playing the song on repeat, so you should share my YouTube favorites. 2. The video is a really neat use of of social networking, sort of utilizing the same viral capacity of the great world wide web as, my fellow Atlantan, Cee Lo Green’s video did earlier this summer. To give you an idea of its success, the video has received 40,000 views since I found it 4 hours ago, bringing it to more than 160,000 views since it was posted yesterday. 3. I’m also just a total sap, and the song and the idea are super adorable. The Weekly Worldly News explains the impetus for the video in this article that the following excerpt was taken from:

“…Los Angeles-based commercial director Walter C. May combined his visual know-how with the musical talents of his friends in the Daylights to craft a viral-video love letter for his significant other. With Lex, his girlfriend, studying for her MBA at Duke University, May decided to write her a song, ‘I Hope This Gets to You,’ with his friends and create a unique music video that gives OK Go a run for their money. But rather than send it directly to her, May tweeted it on Tuesday and asked friends to pass it on in the hope that it will eventually get to her virally. So far, the clip has been retweeted by Katy Perry and covered by Gizmodo, so it’s only a matter of time.”

Gotta give credit where it’s due, so props to my Intro to Sociology Professor, Greg Goldberg, for showing me this video. I’m only slightly embarrassed that my professor is more hip and connected than I am. Check it out though. Maybe we can find Lex?

Facebook Owns Your Soul

…or at least as much of it you’ve ever exposed on your profile.

Aside from being a great way to keep in touch with everyone you’ve ever met and a prodigious time killer, Facebook.com is a big, fat cash cow for Mark Zuckerberg and pals. It’s also a privately owned company, which means that since you, the collegiate social networker, agreed to all its terms and conditions upon signing up, you willingly contribute whatever information you post to its vast archives.

But if you’ve ever tried to delete your Facebook account, you might be aware that merely deactivating your profile doesn’t actually get rid of it. Copies of the information in a deactivated account remain on Facebook servers indefinitely, and a lot of ex-Facebook users have found that trying to completely remove their information leaves them running in circles.

In a Technology feature today, the NY Times talks to a lot of pissed off people who have been trying to give up Facebook, but find that their membership on it is as persistent as the bad habit it used to be. Many are concerned and even paranoid about the fact that even though it offers a “deactivate account” option, Facebook never really tells you that it still has everything stored in its data mine – unlike other social networking sites like Myspace and eHarmony.

This raises the issue of potential abuse of data by selling it to advertisers. The Facebook company is still trying to find ways to make larger profits off the enormous traffic it gets (over 65 billion per month), and providing marketers the treasure trove of demographic and behavioral information it contains seems to have the most potential.

Facebook spokespeople maintain that they’re not doing anything illegal, and besides, anyone who is complaining should realize that they agreed to the terms and conditions and should have read them before bitching about it. Also, if they ever plan to reactivate their accounts, it’s really simple to do so since nothing was deleted from the archives.

In response to all this concern, a slowly growing community has formed in the network of Facebook groups – people who plan to leave Facebook someday but find it convenient to stay on for awhile with the knowledge of how to eventually get out. The largest one is a group with about 5,000 members called “How to permanently delete your facebook account,” detailing the methods with which you can ostensibly be Facebook-free forever.

It might not be much, but if you ever muster up the willpower to free yourself from Scrabulous, the burning need for constant self-image reinvention, and stalking people in your NSM classes, this might help you out.

Get the whole article here:
How Sticky Is Membership on Facebook? Just Try Breaking Free

Tips for Long Distance Friendships

So every summer there comes a time when a whole bunch of new kiddies come to Wesleyan and a whole bunch of older kiddies leave. Summer, then, is a transitional time for a lot of people and it often calls for the geographic displacement of close friends to be sucked up by schools in other time zones or *gasp* tiny, tiny cubicles in big, big buildings in cities far away.

And with the advent of Facebook, many of these kids say to themselves, “Hey, we’ll be in touch, there’s always Facebook!” Yeah huh.

Facebook sucks for bonding. I’ve railed against it before as a really poor substitute for social engagement, but I can’t emphasize this enough: DO NOT RELY ON FACEBOOK TO KEEP IN TOUCH. Facebook is only good for one of three things: 1) looking up someone mentioned in conversation who you do not know, 2) graffiti and 3) leaving totally non-committal “let’s hang!” notes on people’s walls.

Right. So with that said, Facebook is lame. Except for graffiti. Graffiti will revolutionize the entire internet. Just like The Two Coreys will revolutionize television. You’ll see.

Ok, back to my point. So what do you do when friends move away?

I’m not the best phone chatter. In fact, when I look at my monthly cell phone statement, on my family plan of my brother, my grandmother and I, both my brother and my grandmother outtalk me. Which is both revealing of my character and lends credence to my theory that gram is actually a neo-soviet spy using my unused minutes to contact the mother country.

But I do manage to keep in touch with a lot of friends scattered now all over the country via snail mail. And I can’t recommend this enough. Email gets curt and trite after a while. “Hey, sorry I haven’t written in a while, I’ve been busy! Studying lots! Are you busy? Studying? Yeah, I hear you. Anyway, I gotta go. Test tomorrow.” And then they gradually become less and less frequent and three years later you ask yourself, “Hey, didn’t I used to be friends with that girl?”

Right, so tip #2, (after not relying on facebook) is not to rely on email. Email is fine for aunts you see once every three years, but I can’t remember the last time I got really excited to get a long email.

So tip #3, my best tip, is to invest in snail mail. At school (or alone in your apartment after taking a new job) receiving letters, postcards and tiny packages can make all the difference between a really crappy day and a pretty good one. Things to consider picking up the next time you’re out:

An address book. Seriously, I think I may be one of the only people I know who still keeps one of these, but I make it a point to jot down things like birthdays, school addresses, phone numbers, etc.

Stamps. Both regular (or those crazy *forever* stamps) and postcard. Stock up. I always regret when I’m pennywise and pound poor about buying stamps because then I’ll write a letter out only to realize I have no postage. It’s quite possibly one of the most annoying things in the world, ranked closely in my heart next to those ladies at the grocery store who park their carts in front of the yogurt, blocking you from getting said yogurt. Seriously. So annoying.

Stationery. Blank cards, envelopes, nice letter paper, good pens. The works. I keep a box of this crap filled and make a point to stock up whenever I see a sale or find cheap Thank You cards at the dollar store…which…brings me to my next point:

Thank You Cards. As a human being living and breathing on Earth, I can’t tell you how many thank-you cards I’ve sent out since being at college. Letters of recommendation writers, gift givers, friends who do you considerate favors, the like. They’re incredibly important and go a long way to show gratitude and appreciation but I feel like no one sends them anymore–which makes them even more important! These you should *always* have on hand. Always. It might as well be the law.

Assorted Clippings. Ok, this is more a quirk I have than anything, but I often clip out things like recipes I find in magazines or print out comics I like and put them in my stationery box to include in my next letter to a friend. It’s not much, but sometimes I end up sending an entire letter just composed of clippings and a mix cd. Xue tried this once when I worked as a camp counselor; she sent me an envelope full of wheat wrapped in a drawing of an octopus. It’s the thought that counts.


Name:
Email:
For: