Thought Process : Process Thoughts

Update - I’m not going to get the next parts of this out before the Thanksgiving holiday - just too much to do, but, shortly there after. Promise.

If you’ve read the press lately, watched 60 minutes, 20/20, know anyone under 30 or been to the water cooler at work, you’ve no-doubt heard about the increase in chatter about Websites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn which make it easier to reconnect with old friends and colleagues. Between all the new terms and the plethora of sites, you might be wondering how to get your feet wet in this new world.

Well, that’s what I’m here to help you with! There are a couple logical steps to dipping your toes in the water which will probably make it easier for you to do a couple things you are already doing, and that will pave the way for deeper social interactions if you want to keep using computers to socialize with friends, old and new.

Now, if you’re just looking to passively read blogs or view photos and videos (what we call “consume”) you’re going to have to look elsewhere; Google your favorite interest, hobby or passion and you’ll be busy for weeks. I’m really pointing you in the direction so you can take your first steps into contributing to the fascinating wealth of information which is out there.

So, we really only do a few things on the Internet of social worth -

1. We send and receive messages with other people (this can be anything from email to chat rooms, to recommendations, to various Web site specific versions of messages we’ll get into in the next chapter)
2. We create, store and share stuff we’ve created, such as photos, video, writing and recommendations for books and products
3. We track and organize stuff, like Web sites we’ve visited, messages we’ve sent, music we like, things we want to own

I’m guessing you’re doing some of these things already, at the very least the first: you do email right? You’re probably doing # 2 as well, if you have a camera, video camera, write stuff in Word, paint pictures, etc., you just might not be doing it socially on the Web yet. And, if you’re doing anything in life, you’re probably organizing it, from the proverbial shoe box full of receipts, to a hyper organized filing system to fully web based way of tagging (don’t worry, if that term’s foreign to you, I’ll explain it later) and organizing your digital stuff, you’re somewhere on the scale of being organized. [Need graphic here for the scale]

The organizational part is where so many people get hung up in this computer stuff. The fact that it’s all transparent, and shapeless makes organizing it a challenge for some people who are either very visual, or just used to working in our physical 3-D world. Don’t worry, there are tricks, and some concepts which will help you overcome these obstacles.

So, in my next three posts (hopefully one per day Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday the week after Thanksgiving) I’m going to dig into a beginners guide to doing each of these three things.

1. We’ll send some messages other people on the web can read and benifit from. We’ll probably start at Amazon because it’s pretty non-threatening, and you’ve probably been there. If you haven’t done it, we’ll set up a wish list while we’re there.
2. We’ll create a photo account at what’s probably the most popular photo sharing site, Flicker and we’ll use this thing called “tagging” to organize our own photos, and find other people out in the “community” who might take photos similar to ours. Finally we’ll also look around Flickr and see how you can leave little messages there telling people how you like their stuff,
3. We’ll set up this really great service called Delic.icio.us where we can bookmark sites we find, and use a system basically the same as Flickr to find other people who are looking at stuff similar to ours. It’s really great because a) it stores your Web browsing bookmarks on their site, so you can get to them from any browser on any computer anywhere, and b) the look-up thing can really expand your ability to find things faster.

Then we’re going to take a little break and debrief. somewhere in there we’ll talk a little about privacy and security around this stuff. Then we’ll talk about how to share these things with your friends before moving on to some more socially complex sites and services on the Web.

So, check back, it’ll be fun.