Facebook!! :Look at me Now at GooglePlus and Circling

Google Corporate Office Headquarters in the USA:

1600 Amphitheater Parkway

Mountain View, California 94043

I am 57 years old , a grandmother and an avid social media enthusiast and active blogger.    I started my first blog "How the Internet gives me a voice" January 2013,  in response to a LinkedIn article asking readers to submit their responses.
(http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130110231956-5062-i-want-to-know-how-does-the-internet-give-you-a-voice).

The responses were due by a deadline and since I did not even know how to create a blog, I sent an email attachment to the requester prior to the deadline. In their email response they suggested that the formats for submission were #Wordpress or an established blog link.  Unfortunately, my post was not accepted due to the deadline.

I was actively established  with a #Gmail  account, along with #Yahoo, #Aol and #iCloud.  With my interest in posting my article in a blog format, I googled:  How to create a blog :  By no accident, sure nuff!! #Blogger topped  the search results.  Twelve posts  later my readership has topped 1800 views.  Woot!! Woot!!

On Facebook I have 347 friends of which, I know at least one third is family.  I have linked my #Twitter account to Facebook so I have multiple posts simultaneously.   But here is the separation of the goats and the sheep.

Between #LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter there are defined tenets of market strategy and personal branding.   Here is my observation and personal assessment.

Resumes are posted to LinkedIn and you invite friends to connect.  You and your connections share posts and submit endorsements of each each others skills, knowledge and aptitude.  You get to follow leaders and comment on posts. You get to see former colleagues and companies advertising and hiring for positions.    In LinkedIn you are a guest, and not a participant. Until you are a designated leader in your particular sphere of expertise and have garnered a large following, the doors to connection remain open, only to a closeted few.  There is no visible cross utilization and cross pollination of circles to engage with each other on an active call and response basis. #Google+ masters interactive community engagement

Facebook and Twitter are the social marketplace for personal curiosities, interests and most often abstract sharings.  Facebook analytics should identify that their tween to thirties populations have migrated  in large numbers to the super instantaneous Twitter and Instagram platforms.  Google+ communities are vibrant, engaging and robustly populated with interactive participants ranging in ages from early twenties to seniors like myself.  

Just for example, these are the communities that I have joined  and now potentially have the visibility of thousands for my following, and viewing my posts:

#How to write better  195 members
#Blogging  2506 members
#Social Media Marketing  6458 members
#Google+ Helper Community  1768 member
#Google+ Updates 42619 members
#Caribbean Cooking and Culture  515 members
#Buddhism and Meditation  27619 members
#Entrepreneurs, Self Employed and Small Business  17883 members

With less than six months of active posting and sharing on Google,  I am connecting with the pedigree of circles, the people who recommend the best talents to each other, starting with Chef  +Larry Fournillier , a fellow Trinidad and Tobago national.   Larry, who has amassed a very large and dedicated following has shared introductions to communities,  helped me with navigating the connections with the best of circles, and  has been a most instrumental connection for me,  as a new google+ sharer.    I have continued  to see a growing and nurturing expansion of followers, friends, circles and acquaintances from every walk of life and to people in world locations I would never have known.  Among my best of circles are the most experienced and most sharing collaborators +Michael Bennett +Karin Sebelin +Martin Holmes +Mark Traphagen +martin shervington +Jason Hurtado Daniels +Jacob Travis +J.C. Kendall +Ronnie Bincer , just a few of the brilliant engagers who teach, instruct and educate on all levels of social media inter activity.   +Tazein Mirza Saad is a  regularl poster, who provides gifted thoughts in prose and poems of inspiration to her large following.

The grasp with which Google has gripped the social media global landscape is gargantuan.  There are features that for the novice user, are most complex.   It will take repeated exercises and exhaustive usage to become a competent and  advanced practitioner   I installed +Google Chrome  on my desktop. I have since downloaded app extensions for +picasa web and other tools for sharing slideshows and video streaming on my profile pages. I have  +google translate , where both readers of my posts or when I read others' posts, the work is translated to the language of preference.   I am in the process of developing my personal website using the +google site development tools. I have attended +Google Hangout featuring a live Caribbean Cooking show, all done in real time with virtual hosting collaborators.

After researching international calling rates, I am now touting the advantages of +Google Voice to all my families, friends and colleagues who have families living abroad.  This is a fact check.  The +Comcast service rate for calls to Trinidad and Tobago is 33 cents per minute.  The rate for the same international call with +Google Voice is one third less. Beam me up Scotty!!! Save me 20 cents per minute on my calls to family abroad.

Will Google be paying me for mentioning them in my blog may be a good question to entertain?  I am eager and very interested in exploring how the +AdSense Dashboard will approve my pages for monetization. Luckily +Skimlinks an earnings qualifier program, has allowed me to be on their platform.  I still don't yet know how the actual results are generated to provide income from my blog posts.

This Google galactic technology frontier is volcanic and explosive in the penetration of world destinations.  Can we as a community really comprehend the monopoly that is permeating all spectres of social communications at warp speed?  Although space travel has not yet commercially materialized,  with the demanding Google update activities of +Richard Branson tweets and  posts, in all social media , about trans Atlantic engineering flight feats, it will be no surprise that +Virgin Galactic  will the leading pioneer in this realm.

What's on your mind asks Facebook status updates?  I posted:

Whether you write, cook, train, or are in business to grow and expand, if you are hesitant about social media, you are missing the opportunity... I have been intrigued by this phenomenon... especially being a 55+er... From my posts, like the song says "if you don't know me, / about me / by now, you will never ever know me....ooooooh." .. As a video on one of my blog posts says, Social media is relationship.

Facebook was the entry for people to air with their body of friends what they chose to share... Google is where communication and building networks of thousands is happening and the best example is from my posts here I typically see the 4 or 5 like....on Google+ my posts have been seen by 1700... Now you do the math...and I started to post blogs because there was a Huffington Post on Linked In that asked How does the Internet give you a voice.. and I crafted a blog response...

I know we are always skeptical to unknowns and change, but stay abreast.... Here is another reason to check out Google... any language is available to you with Google Translate So you can read my blog posts in French English, Spanish Swahili just as an example

Well, it will be no surprise that very soon,  my Facebook status update will  show this as my profile:

Our personalities in social media

Social Media is about Relationship Social Media is about People Based on #1 International Best Selling Socialnomics by Erik Qualman

For the sake of public knowledge I am as guilty of and equally suspect as any and all suggested characterizations that I illustrate in my social media personalities virtual chronicles.

Before all the domains in the virtual landscape of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google, LinkedIn , Blogger, just to name a few,were live, connected, and instantaneously accessible tools of communication, we were much like the tortoise enclosed in protective worlds and moseying along to our safe place of habitat and protected dwellings.

I was especially disdainful to the growing advances of internet technology. It was to me a further separation of societies and a defining division of those with available access and those without.

But I straddled tenuously into the territory of my virtual explorations and with comrades of all ages, locations, interests, perspectives, have found wisdom, insights. amusement and a most colorful assortment of interests and idiosyncrasies from the likes of fellow traversers in virtual reality.

The characters below are based on my own distorted concepts. It is no direct intention to "out" any identity. So if you are inclined to think its you and are honored by mention, please take a bow. If the humor of my musings makes you suspect an offense to you, please take a more salutary bow.

I delight in sharing pictures. Pictures from whence to now. Pictures of me, my immediate family, loved ones friends. Until I understood that everyone is not interested in every picture or video or last place visited, and whether it was sunny cold, or my dog is a pitbull or a "chiwawa" that I enthusiastically share, I began to build my online repository of content.with personal enjoyment.

Some of the most laughable moments online are shared in honest humor and brutal rancor by friends having children episodes, or discussing their weight gain/ loss and describing some of the side effects of digestive malfunctions.  Sometimes private voyeurism is embarrassingly posted,  hmmmnn!! quite accidentally??

What happens on Facebook does not stay on Facebook. Just by an investigating curiosity of some perverted postings, you, me and all who have no need to know about our social proclivities have shared incriminating evidence of our no longer secret follies. Busted!!

Tweens and the under 30 generations are best found Twittering and Instagramming since they have discovered that most of their parents and friends are just discovering social media. While we are having daily postings, sharing jokes, and chatting, tweens and 30 somethingers have migrated to the next techno frontier.

Occasionally they might share a posting to get a Like.  Birthday wishes or events that are neutral and get Likes are their miserly facebook offerings.
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We have all become marketers. If we can get enough people to Like our pages we can grow our business. If we need to solicit clientele for funding and we need a new audience to buy our services or products we post, we pin and we link.

Some people use the medium as a sounding board to intellectually cuss out their leadership. Some people post their bigotry, their insensitivity , their political posturing and their biased judgements.

For a former diplomat at an international convention in Geneva whose most illustrious career speech detailing her "wining" prowess as part of her official dossier, went viral on social media, it was her unplanned best exit strategy. She was quickly relieved of her post and returned to her home country.

Some people play games and use their work hours for beating the ratings challenges. And after their idle googlings and doodlings, most of all their connections see their games activity on public share. And they invite others to join.  Unknowingly..I suppose.

People with their clandestine agendas are usually unfriended. One friend was quick to exit friend status when seeing activities that the "friend's" nocturnal interests were more exclusive to others.

When I first saw my son's Facebook page under his page pseudonym I quickly sent an inbox note with motherly warning. Please remember public is not private and the wall of information you share can help you or hurt you.!!!!

I follow Atheist, Agnostic, Buddhist and Christian, Judaic, Islamic postings. The most militant subscribers in their doctrines are also those whose fervor for contention is their greatest passion.

I have found new friends, I have discovered people and places. There are the  sharers, posters and those who are quiet choristers. And there are also the ignorers.

Many also share their reasons for not being on social media.

They typically argue that they prefer to maintain a professional persona on sites like LinkedIn . They usually seem to have concerns about private information being public. This is an example of too much info (TMI).   An ex partner is lurking on facebook and  discovers what happened in Vegas is now public info.  This is cause for the claim that 1 of 5 divorces occur because of facebook.

Some of us indulge the adventure of social media to enjoy the magic of virtual exploration. For me discoveries are exciting, amusing, illuminating, and engrossing as I survey this human constellation in the social media virtual space galaxy.

Within this landscape we are all the artists. We are a colony of thoughts, ideas, dreams and fantasies. We are posting and sharing and nonetheless entertaining with our palette of varied substance.

So delicious are the tastings, that there is always plentiful and bountiful artistry to relish and savor.

Dream On

We dreamers have our way, of facing rainy days and sometimes we survive
We keep our feelings warm, protect them from the storm, until our time arrives
Then one day the sun appears, and we come shining through those lonely years....

lyrics from I made it through the rain sung by Barry Manilow

What medicine can be prescribed to hope, to trust and to adorn  "belief" that allows one to dream on?    I am really stretching my quotient of fortitude to herald the possibility of  life purpose.  I am struggling in this incarnation to actualize my dream and embrace my life purpose

In my likeness of being, I am very aware, understanding, sympathetic and emotionally cognizant of why I am and whose I am.  I do not underestimate gratitude for the blessings.   The maladies of poor health- crises of unbearable proportions  -disease - disasters - unconscionable pain that we as a community of living share are the mirrors of my own self indulgence.  But, the "I" is ever in struggle and I want to taste and imbibe that euphemistic sense of accomplishment and completion.

From the many rags to riches, the "once was blind and now I see", the spiritual journey to faith, the victories from the desert of despair, the world is engorged with lofty profusion in stories of all who have walked their life paths and reached their worldly nexus.  The worldly distribution of all that can be amassed is still most disproportionately imbalanced and I find that the struggle to be most burdensome. 

Our generation of the post baby bloomers, the generation Xs, the millennials are inundated with maps for charting our lives to purpose, to prosperity, posterity, and social definition.  The philosophy of being is commerced with possibility. We dream to be.

Marilyn Monroe,  a figment of being,  lived her life shadowed by the farce of beauty and hypersensitive sensuality.   Michael Jackson, caricatured his artistry of being, to be masked under the veils of fantasy.  Steve Jobs, supreme guru of ibeing, masterfully proliferated world reachability with touch and sound.  Martin Luther King Jr. prophetically rendered the I have a Dream speech, and in witness to his dream, a President Barack Obama emerged.

What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve. The cornucopia of related beingness is ever accessible and readily available. From Ebay to Amazon any purchaseable item is within seconds of ownership,  subject to one's disposable income. The creation of billionaires have increased exponentially. From AOL, the now almost extinct dinosaur of internet entre to Google the playground of virtual connectivity, we are constantly talking, and wooing, and exchanging, and garnering information for more dissemination. And our minds are constantly wanting and dreaming of the indefatigable more.

With Facebook and other social media platforms, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, we invite ourselves to discuss and relate with family, friends strangers, the public,  about every nuance that shapes our beingness.  At my discretion, just like managing my palette for food, I can be aggressively consumptive in my utilization of virtual engagement.  Apart from my own meanderings, public pronunciations, confessions, demonstrations of poetic license,  it is also my desire for understanding more of the whole, that keeps me curiously engaged.

Oprah shows the majestic being of what could be.  Her treasury is overflowing. Her wealth, her achievement, her accomplishments are testimonials of grandiose empowerment.  She dreamed that she would be bigger than the circumstance that she was born into. From the outside looking in, I heartfully and earnestly salute the richness of her demonstrations of being.

Tyler Perry uses the myriad of challenging circumstances that would have undeniably stalled even the most daring of dream seekers to demonstrate the power of what can be. He merchandises the "If" factor....He presents the gift of his being cloaked in humor, and bathed in welcome prosperity

When T D Jakes describes the beginnings of his journey to becoming one of  the most successful leaders in the realm of ministry, it resonates the Dream and belief potency.

Wayne Dyer, Caroline Myss, Marianne Williamson and a burgeoning army of spiritual intuitives all resounding eschew the mental firmament of self awakening, self ascension, self resurrection.  For the flock of the faithful, believing is the spiritual serum of salvation.  The litany of quotes from the Secret is touted with philanthropic spewings.  Every speaker, writer, blogger has become the pundit on matters of what one desires to become.

Innumerable volumes of works and theories are expounded on what the passion to dream entails. From the most scholarly and literary sciences our dream patent is encrypted with exploratory details and flourishing disguises.

With my posts, I am in a constant state of  wonder. In my state of wonder, I am writing my life examination.  The tests are plagued with refining and modifying the given circumstance with the desired result.  What I have wished could have been, hasn't.  The gift of understanding the dilemma of my existence is trapped in the shackles of disappointment.

As the blueprint of life unravels without the success roadmap in approachable reach, it  makes the inspiration and the aspiration to live the dream seem unrealistic.

Nonetheless, there is a drama unfolding and the script is being perfected.  I am wrestling  the burden of embracing all that is not mine to have. Without the measure of wealth, success, and all the things that I continue to dream will unleash my inexhaustible potentiality, without the  tangible expressions of the realization of security, without the diminished returns for all my life experiences, I would not be me.

Even in eyes of misfortune, I celebrate that I am yet unfinished. In the dearth of the unexplainable, the darkness of the soul, as described by Caroline Myss in her book Spiritual Madness, I passionately desire to be more.

As with all who are conflicted, and torn, and even demented by the ongoing dream to experience their earthly " I am more than any of the limitations of my awareness" I continue my quest with unquenchable  passion and I and you, we must Dream On.


This song is what I am saying...We Dreamers have our way  Of facing rainy days, and sometimes we surviveWe dreamers have our way