Bye for Now

Image by Bill Cammack via Flickr

I’m going to go into hibernation for a bit regarding this blog, and start deleting some of my online traces where this is possible. The plan is to end up with one website dedicated to my PhD, where I will then also integrate my twitter eventually, as well as – maybe – a blog in the future. However this won’t be a daily one like I’ve attempted with this one.

The reality is that my life is pretty steady right now – I know where I’ll be living, working, and who I’ll be dating for the foreseeable future. I have no desire for change.

Hence, I will focus on the things in my offline life and enhance them, and make them better and better. There’s not much room right now for social media, or ‘web 2.0’ (apart from maybe twitter, but that’s micro and not intrusive upon my life!).

The other point is that I think the backlash against social media has begun (see for ex. Bobbie Johnson’s Why I’m finished with Social Media). Brought on partly by the credit crunch, but also the fact that companies will realise that they’re have to make money out of it somehow, then they’ll introduce some shite, and users will desert. I’m not a doom-monger, but I’ve always been kinda right in my vibe about the internet. I might just be starting a new trend here 🙂

Britney Spears’ Online Media Manager

Image via Wikipedia

This strikes me as a great idea – and no doubt other ‘celebs’ already have a ‘personal online brand manager’.

Britney Spears (well… her ‘people’)  is looking for her own Brand/Social Media Manager. Apparently this was posted on the Harvard-only private job board (according to TechCrunch, link above).

You don’t have to be posh to be geeky. I’d say rather the opposite. There again, Facebook was founded by Mr. Zuckerberg while at Harvard, I believe.

Either way, I can’t think of anything duller than having to maintain Ms Spears’ various online identities. Yawn.

I’ve Deactivated My Facebook Account :D

I’ve deactivated my Facebook just now. I’m getting a friend to see whether I have indeed ‘disappeared’ from her friends’ list.

I’m happy to downshift this year. With the ‘frugality’ also comes a quest for more simple natural pleasures I suppose. I haven’t watched regular TV (other than very selected shows on iPlayer/4oD) for the last 6 months, and thus haven’t been indoctrinated with TV and especially commercials at all. It’s made my head clearer and happier, as if I can focus much more on what I want and need.

The only way I can describe it is that I’m digging inside myself and doing stuff with what is there, rather than opening myself up to all the shit that is around and having to digest that. I’ve become much more selective, or rather: I’ve always been a selective c*nt but had become more open to let crap into my head over the last few years. Crap alongside the good stuff naturally – the good stuff has never disappeared.

The only difference now is that the void that’s being left by reducing the crap will *also* be filled with good stuff.

I.e. not just, say, 65% good and 35% crap, but 100% good 😀

(if any of the above doesn’t make sense don’t worry – it does to me 😉 )

Credit Crunch Affecting my Previous Company

I found out today that my previous company had to make 6 people redundant due to the current economic situation (= fucked).

I was chatting with an ex-colleage whom I hadn’t talked to for ages and she even had to tell a junior person from her team! Good, then, that I did leave and went back up to Scotland to take a job here. Though I don’t think they would have made *me* redundant as I was bringing in lots of £££.

Still, you never know. Apparently it’s very quiet just now, and less ‘social media marketing’ work. The gold rush of social media marketing might be over. Certainly more method is needed, and clients will want to know exactly what their money will give them (ROI). And that, with Social Media, is always a bit more difficult to measure in terms of hard, quantitative facts.

Twitter won’t release my firstnamesurname for 6 months!

Following on from my thinking about increasing my online visibility horizontally, as a first step I tried setting up twitter with my real name rather than lenina.

I started by signing up afresh with Twitter (though I’ve had lenina on there since the beginning of 07) and just as I had done so and chosen firstnamesurname, I noticed that they allow you to *change* your user name (this is quite rare! I don’t know anywhere else that allows you to change your name afterwards. E.g. if I ever wanted to continue this blog under my real name, I couldn’t just ‘change’ my WP URL to http://firstnamesurname.wordpress.com).

I then thought, great! No need to have this fresh account then – instead I can just delete the fresh account and change my existing one from lenina to firstnamesurname. Deletion worked fine; however, when trying to subsequently change lenina to firstnamesurname, it told me that ‘that user name already exists’. After waiting for another few days, thinking that it might just take a wee while for the system to release firstnamesurname, I found out by chance that it looks like they keep every new account with associated user name/email address for 6 months 😐

Annoying! They argue people might change their mind. Fair enough, but I’m one and the same person. I’ve emailed them, asking to release it. I might get in touch again if they don’t do it – they should be able to establish that it’s me in any case. As it is, I’m having to use firstname_surname, which is annoying. Or, I could completely scrap lenina and restore firstnamesurname, which I don’t want to do, as I’d rather keep my old account.

EDIT: why the fuck isn’t the screenshot showing up?