Social Networking with Facebook and Twitter
I recently made a large mistake: I underestimated the power of social networking sites. It is an old cliché to say that the world is shrinking but when I posted my recent article about events at Wooton Bassett I never thought that anyone would contact me from that town. Of course I had forgotten that I had recently installed a Twitter feed and a Facebook link-up to this site.
I thank that lady for her kind words in the comments of that post. She shed some light on a subject that I knew little about: how the whole process of the town honouring the dead came about. This would never have happened without that newly installed Twitter feed.
On that note I must offer apologies to regular readers of this site. My connection to the internet is currently a 10meg broadband line. As this is a relatively fast connection I had absolutely no idea that the site was so slow to load for many of you. Hopefully this new theme and a few optimisations will make it load much quicker.
Facebook and Twitter Feeds now Integrated
The inclusion of Facebook and Twitter as features of this site is part of an ongoing project to link various parts of my writing activities together. The idea is that it will make it possible for me to manage these activities without logging into dozens of websites every day. As I am still in the process of constructing more websites for other purposes, I thought it better to get this aspect sorted out sooner rather than later.
My personal Facebook account currently numbers about 300+ friends, some I know in real life and many I do not. What I love about social networking sites like Facebook is the opportunity to meet and chat to people that I would not otherwise meet. So far my experiences on Facebook have been 100% positive and I don’t really expect that to change.
In common with many users, when I started on Facebook my friends list was restricted to those that I had met personally. A real life friend, who is also an aspiring writer, put my thinking straight on this. He pointed that social networking is a great thing, especially for us introverted writer types!
Dangers of Social Networking
The media in Britain today is almost constantly full of horror stories about social networking sites and the paedophiles and other predators that apparently inhabit them. This media pressure means that many people refuse friend requests from people unless they know them. I think that this is missing the real benefits that social networking sites like Facebook offer, namely the chance to meet new and (hopefully) interesting people.
Of course that is not to say that real dangers do not exist from some members on these sites, but that is where education (about the risks of meeting total strangers) and parenting comes in, surely? I cannot for the life of me understand what has gone wrong in Britain today that every time there is some perceived “evil” in society the government attempts to pass a new law to quell the moral panic. Has democracy in Britain always been so fearful? Have we really lost the ability to look after our own family members?
Dave Felton
PS. For what it is worth, look me up on Facebook anytime and ask to add me as a friend. I have no problem with it at all. What I cannot promise is to do respond in depth to every message, but I will try to help if I can.
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