THE PERSONAL WEB 
The social networking phenomenon has exploded during the past year, with Facebook and Google the dominant players in grabbing a slice of user time. Go to any recent web page and you have options that barely existed in 2008. With the click of a button, you can post it to Facebook (or become a fan), tweet it out on Twitter, digg it up for Digg, or shout it out in various ways. You can subscribe to RSS feeds and get more content like it.
These sites and applications all revolve around the individual user, represented by the smileyface icon in the middle.
The new Web is nothing if not narcissistic!
HOW MY WEB INTEROPERATES
How does all this work together, this web o' mine, and why do I waste endless time (as my parents would have it) on this particular group of web sites?
Let's say my kids do something cute. There are millions of people in this world, and all of the reproducing ones have kids who do something cute about every five minutes. But my kids are the cutest and the smartest. To take one example, my little boy climbs an apple tree and picks some apples.
I can rush out and take a photo of him in the tree, and post it to Flickr or, since I have a FlipShare video camera, to a FlipShare channel.
Or I can make a video of him, and put it on Youtube.
Then I can blog about it, imbedding photos/videos if I wish. My blog is right here on LSNet.
Then I can honk my own horn on Twitter, Digg, and Facebook, sending everybody the news that I have posted some new content.
Just in case anybody missed it, I can use Google's Gmail to send everybody links. And if I misplace anything, or want to know more about anything, I can google it.
Do I like it all of when my friends do the same thing? Absolutely. I can't get enough of their videos of their kids climbing trees. Their personal webs are part of my personal web. So is any content that they think is cool which I agree is cool and re-share, re-tweet, forward via email, or buzz up by other cyber-means.
People who are hoping to sell something—including the new and growing crop of people who move information around in the clouds of personal webs linked by these sites, such as Maria Reyes McDavis, Pete Cashmore of Mashable and Ross Larocco—have even more use for social networking than people who aren't commercially motivated. Social media gurus may be the first class of educators in history to create their own credentials hour by hour, democratically elected by the cybermob and the advertising revenue that follows them, and to sink or swim on their own merits. Move enough cool content, plug into enough killer apps, get clicked on and recirculated by enough people, and you're rich and powerful.
You may not have the cyber chops to become a mover and shaker on the new web (I know I don't), but if you have anything to sell whatsoever, be it knowledge or a tangible product or service of some kind, you will not be able to survive without harnessing social media tools in 2010. Hang it up now. People who hide behind boring, noninteractive, corporate websites will not be able to compete.
DOES BARBARA KINGSOLVER HAVE A POINT
when she says that social networking is an unhealthy substitute for real human interaction, such as taking your neighbor a bag of turnips or a dozen eggs and sitting down for a cup of coffee?
Nah. Not really. What would you rather have, turnips, or a video of your kid and mine doing the Cupid Shuffle on Main Street the night before Halloween? I would need a really big net to catch one of my friends at a time convenient for us both, but my buds and I can cybermeet when mutually convenient. Or, we can find out in advance, usually on Facebook Wall/Chat, that we are going to run into one another at our children's endless sporting events, and if she wants eggs, she can text or tweet me. Facebook is bringing the world together.
Besides, there are so many interesting things going on in the world, in Southwest Virginia, and in your own town, and with everyone you know and love, and if you build your own personal web and social network, you find out about them all. Fast.
Graphic art for this story was created in OpenOffice Draw, the free open source graphic editor, and, just like the program I created it with, the art is absolutely free. If you like, take it and use it with my blessings.
