Fanatics Folly: Social Media is Maddening, Facebook Steps It Up, Mmmm…

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Social Networks. So many of them. Not enough time. When they don’t behave as they should, it’s maddening. 

Making the social network “rounds” this morning it seems like the powers that be wanted me to have a challenging day.

First up was Klout. Hey, I like to give K; it’s a friendly thing to do, giving Klout to those I’ve been tweeting with for a while as well as a few new tweeps. Here's what happened when I tried to tweet a K:

Have I crossed a line somewhere and attempted to venture where no other man has gone (or woman)? Is Klout a "Forbidden Planet"?

Next up was StumbleUpon, a site that has never benefited me in any way. Yet, I press on. Wanted to add one of my blog posts (have added 174 of them previously). I selected marketing as the subject matter, added in my 75 characters of key words with high hopes for the slightest chance that my blog may be found by someone on StumbleUpon some day, and hit enter. 

Hello! I can't even add ONE from "this site"? Guess it’s going to remain at zero for now.

Oh, and Kred has caused Shockwave to crash on my computer yet again. I think there’s a tie-in to YouTube and Chrome that enables this to happen. More research needed. Sigh.

Touchy touchy Facebook! The wrong thumbnail shows up much of the time when posting from my blog or from my Groovy Reflections website. In fact, that happened today too! 

Mmmmmm….that little social network Facebook? I published my take on the recent changes and someone brought up an interesting point that ties in to what I wrote above. One reader commented “Hope it all works so we are satisfied with promises of a better Facebook.” And that’s a grand thought! 

Now, with the Facebook changes, it was stated during their presentation that the new features would slowly roll out to users so that they could get feedback from those that receive it earlier. This implies that there will be kinks to work out! More annoyance for us all while they “tweak”. 

The interesting part is that they never mentioned HOW they will get the feedback. Can we submit our thoughts somewhere directly? Or are they going to search and pull out all of our whines and tales of woe using the new Graph Search feature that most of us haven't received yet? How invasive is that? And they have every right to do so. At least they haven’t penalized my friends who refer to Mr. Z as “Zukerputz”.

Mmmmm mmmm mmmm mmmm. The Crash Test Dummies have been reading my thoughts! After you enjoy this classic 90's tune, stop by and hum it  when visiting our website, or on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+. 

Social Networking: Time to Go Cold Turkey?

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Okay, I’m certain that this is not the first article on this subject and no I haven’t searched to find out. The thought just popped into my head the other day.

Quickly, I documented several of the bullet points below and the rest flowed in piece meal.

And lo and behold, an article just came out regarding a study on social media addiction, spurring me on!

And some of you know that sometimes I make light of things. We all need to cut loose from time to time, right?

Therefore, I present to you my list of criteria with tell-tale signs that a social networking addiction is taking hold. The list is not complete by any means. If anything, it’s meant to give you a chuckle. It’s likely we’re all guilty of at least one or two of the items cited here. If you identify with at least ten of them, call a doctor or a social media specialist. Please.

You know you’re addicted to social networking when you:

• Share silly kitten photos without even thinking about it.







• Inform your friends about every airport meal you’re having.

• Think the terms “facebooking” and “friending” are verbs.

• Post and/or tweet five times in four minutes.

• Refer to people on Google+ as “plusers” or “plussers”.

• Are so busy posting that there's no time to respond to comments on your own posts.

• The 47 inch TV in your living room is usually dark.

• Have YouTube always queued up.

• Get excited when you see a white number inside a red rectangle.








• Learn the latest gossip about your childhood friends via Facebook.

• Program your tweets so you can spend more time on other social networks.

• Are already on Pinterest.

• Watched the Super Bowl with a beer on the left, buffalo wings on the right, and a laptop in the middle.








• Have Firefox and Chrome both in full swing with your multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts open.

• Someone makes a joke about “crackbook” and you think it’s funny.

• Check your Facebook messages and notifications before your email.

So, how did you do? And what else would you add to this list?



John Lennon reminded us how painful withdrawal from an addiction can be with this moving song.

How to Make Facebook Look “Old” Again

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It’s obvious. Most of us are not happy campers with the new, improved Facebook; in particular, the ticker and top stories features. Yeah, I understand it’s hard to leave your comfort zone but I’m siding with all of you; they’ve overdone it this time.

So some of us are frantically trying every suggestion that comes our way. Including me. I’ve found what I think may be the best one.

I created a list called “Whole Wide World”. You may want to call yours “News Feed”. I have included EVERYONE. I took each and every friend and added them to it. Painful because it can take a while to do. If you want to create a list with all or most of your friends here’s how:

• On the home page, place your cursor just to the right of where it says Lists on the left.

When the word more appears in blue, click on it.

• Select “Create a List”
• Add a bunch of friends to it
• Click done. Now click on the name of the new list of the left side. Suggestions of who to add should appear over on the right. Go through all those friends and add them to the list. This is a much quicker way to add them! When that’s exhausted…
• Click on the upper right where it says “Manage Lists” and add a few more friends by clicking on them. If they initially turn blue, just click on them again.
• Click done, click on the list name on the left and add the suggestions
• Working back and forth like this will get the list created a bit faster, especially if you have a lot of friends (say 300 or more).
• Under Manage Lists, you can control which updates you’d like to see. This is where you can unclick games if you’re not interested in them. The choices are:

o Status Updates
o Photos
o Games
o Comments and Likes
o Other Activity (this includes announcements of friends making new friends)

Now that the list is created with all of your friend feeds, it’s important to add favorite pages as well.
• Under Manage Lists, select Add/Remove Friends.
• Once the window opens with your friends, click on the down arrow in the upper left and switch to pages.
• Add pages you want to include in your list. Perhaps you want all of them? Hmmm…could be a good time to clean up all those lists you are on!
• Click done when you are done. This time, you really can’t do the go back and forth with suggestions. Sorry, it only works with friends.

Now you are done!

For now, this seems to be the way to control what you want to see. I also suggest that going to the wall of your favorite friends and under Subscribe, click on the option for all updates. Again, you have control here. Facebook assumes that you want “most updates” and has made that the default.

One thing I’ve noticed since I created my “Whole Wide World” list. I’m getting emails with additional comments from everyone else that has commented after me on a post. Not certain this is caused by the new list though. More work to be done!
One more thing. If you want to remove the ticker click here for Chrome users and here for Firefox. The Firefox addon requires a reboot after installing.