Digital Marketer : Statistician : Sociologist
Yes, I just said this. No, I will not remove my comment- it is funny.
I was excited to learn today that the tickets went on sale for the PostSecret event up at the U of U went on sale. I posted something on a friend's FB page about it and we lamented about the obnoxious 'service charge' that SmithTix - and virtually everyone- tacks onto their ticket prices these days and it got me thinking about something that came to mind last week while in the back of a cab during yet another shitty cab ride. Why do we as consumers seem to be given no choice but to just put up with crappy service? I see this mainly with:
Cable/ISP Service Companies
Phone Carriers
Cab Drivers
Ticket Vendors
Airlines
Any other additions or arguments against members of this list?
I did something last week that I try not to do very often. I posted a Facebook status about someone hurting my feelings, but I didn’t explain why. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, it was because I couldn’t without talking about things that aren’t for public discussion. Immediately after posting this status my kind friends sprung into action and made me feel better. It worked, but I felt stupid and passive aggressive realizing that everyone who read my status message and talked to me that day could have possibly thought it was something they did- and the person that did it isn’t even on Facebook to have seen it and apologized. I felt like I was in middle school again.
After realizing this mistake and the fact that it has now bothered me for a week, I am going to make a pledge to not make passive aggressive status updates or, even worse, the cry for attention status updates. These status messages come in many forms such as the my relationship is over and heart is broken alert, mention of how life cannot go on, general announcements of how much your life sucks, or the status of something involving crying. There are just some things that are not Facebook appropriate. I’m pretty good about these not being an issue; I do draw a line somewhere of what I will put on Facebook and what I won’t. I don’t even let Bryan post on his profile that we are in a relationship. Mostly because I want to make sure Facebook isn’t the one telling my friends I dumped him for Lonnie the mailman. His business card says “International Man of Mystery”- he sounds promising.The more time I spend on Facebook and Twitter, the easier it is for me to understand the value of both networks separately because of their differences. There is, however, one thing that makes them annoyingly similar- people who update both their Facebook and Twitter at the same time with the same information. I would call this the problem of redundant content, but it isn’t the redundancy that is bothersome. Sometimes there is a message you would like to share with both communities like the birth of a child, the change of a job, or a review of the new restaurant on the corner, but it is the ongoing redundancy of some content by users that requires to make a choice: Friend or Follow?
This question is really about what I see as the differences between Facebook and Twitter. There isn’t a guidebook or set of restrictions that say what you can and cannot do when generating your own content and networks, but I can at least have an opinion. For me, Facebook is about people I actually have a personal connection to because they are the the people who I see on a regular basis, the ones I grew up with, the ones I went to school with, the ones I met at that party last week and had a blast talking to and even the people that I don’t know all that well, but want to get to know better. These are my personal relationships. Twitter, on the other hand, is about people I want to learn from and share information with, but on a more professional level. Am I going to post every piece of interesting digital marketing news on Facebook to bore the crap out of my friends and family? Probably not, unless its about something I specifically contributed to creating or achieving or a big award we won as a company. Will I post all that news on Twitter? Hell yes. Why? Because the people on Twitter are just a network of hubs in the information grid. My Twitter followers care about different things than my Facebook friends, and only sometimes do they overlap. Are there exceptions? Of course. Some of my personal friends only use Twitter and I won’t penalize them for that choice, I just follow them. Does this mean that I won’t friend and follow you? No, it just means that if I do I will have to make a choice when I start seeing double.
Now that I’ve stated my reasoning, I’m off to make some hard choices. It’s my network and I make the rules.
I am currently a Product Strategist at iCrossing in charge of Business Intelligence. Formerly, I was the Manager of Advanced Analytics. I'm a marketer, mathematician, sociologist, student of the web, crafter of my own social network, amateur knitter and potter, people watcher, Red Cross disaster volunteer, and warrior against clutter.
I do all of this from Salt Lake City, UT. Don't knock it until you've lived here!
