Facebook, Twitter, Etc.

how about CR4?

You can have conversations with people on Twitter. Simply type @CR4_News in the text of your tweet to tweet us here at CR4! Any time you include a user name, whomever holds that account is aware of it. You can also tweet someone by clicking reply on one of their tweets (the conversation will be linked together, kind of like a mini forum discussion).

Here's a search of all the people that either mentioned Obama or wrote @ his Twitter account: https://twitter.com/search?q=%40barackobama&src=tyah You can see that some people tweeted @ him directly with specific concerns or comments. Looking on his profile page, I don't see where he tweeted anyone back, though.

Whether the President and the Pope are actually the ones behind their accounts 100% of the time is another matter. For example, the @BarackObama Twitter account's description reads: "This account is run by Organizing for Action staff. Tweets from the President are signed -bo."

Facebook is absolutely filled with a lot of garbage, but it's still handy for following your favorite companies/groups/organizations/causes all in one place. It's a nice way to keep up to date on sales, announcements, specials, etc. without cluttering your inbox.

Twitter is another good venue for customer service. Lots of companies have accounts set up to handle user support. See @DellCares for an example (be sure to toggle to view All tweets rather than no replies).

Your Facebook page gets filled with garbage depending on how you have your account set up and who you 'friend'.

I keep my friends list to under 100, which includes my immediate family, cousins, a few nieces and nephews, some old classmates, former co-workers and various friends. I've 'unfriended' perhaps a dozen old high school classmates, friends, etc., who kept posting political and other info I had no interest in, or updates on their facebook games.

For me it's mainly a way to stay in touch with some brothers and sisters who live far away and who I only see maybe once a year.

Precious!

I'm on Farter. We toot.

jhammond

Facebook and twitter are there to generate advertisement fees, the social part is an aftherthought

Twitter is a stream of gibberish to me.

Because i live in Japan, i use social networks to keep in touch with family and old friends

I'm not a very social person. I don't want most of my stuff to be visible to the whole world. I'm on Facebook, but I go there 2 or 3 times a month, and am nearly always frustrated/disappointed.

Virtually everyone who needs to communicate with me either has my email or my CR4 username. Beyond that, use the phone!

Like you say Facebook & Twitter are SOCIAL networks. They are for socializing not work. So you end up dealing with the garbage aspect.

When you go to a party do you only talk about work? Probably not. Even CR4 has a tendency to go social on most occasions. I doubt if you will find any topic here on CR4 that doesn't eventually end up with a more social than strictly work orientated.

I use FB to find out what my friends are planning to do on their days off. Its gotten to the point that we don't actually call each other to say we are doing this or that on the week end. We just post it on FB and if you can make it great I'll talk to you there.

Both are social networking sites mostly liked by younger generation, not by retired engineers as they find it boring.

They are also opportunities to present the younger generations with new ideas.

Haha, Me too. I'm practically enemies with my brother now because he loves Obama and I don't.

Most of my FB friends are both liberals, and good friends.

I like to dangle facts in their faces, like playing with a kitty cat with a ball of yarn; in predictable fashion, they either try to attack them or slap them away.

I don't believe the majority of what I see from Facebook from either side. Both sides embellish things but I like to rankle my brother's feathers. I'm Libertarian.

I lean libertarian also; it's just the people that want to completely eliminate the government, that I disagree with. I like to rankle my brother's feathers too, but he's not on FB, so I have to call him.

They've got your number alright, Mr. Anarchist.

Allow lots of extra time before your next airplane ride.

You may be on the : TSA No-Fly List

<Note> Not sure what kind of scam the above site is, but it's not part of HSA.

What!!???

Anarchist? You know better than that.

There're a few thing's I'll get on board with, with the libertarian anachists, but mostly I'm just a boring, old fashioned conservative.

You can have more than one Face Book account so you can set them up for different things if you want. For example you can have a business "page" that is all about your business, or you can have just a bunch of friends. I have discovered that I have two which just happened to fall into a bunch of friends that are "progressives" and another that turn out to be all "conservatives". It was interesting to discover that these sets of "friends" had such common political interests. I have a FB account that is ONLY for family members and we all keep in touch that way.

Twitter is not something I'm into.

Phone and e-mail are still the best communications on a daily basis.

You can send information via any mechanism to ANYONE, but you can't force them to read or respond to it.

I think that you get what you give when it comes to the social networks...you control the degree of participation by what you have to offer...and where you participate..

Thank you all for your input. You have convinced me that social networking is not for me. I have a few friends (not acquaintances) and all my family lives within 25 miles of me, so E-mail and phone works for me just fine.

I have just started getting on FB at least once or twice a day. Usually when I get to the office early and maybe again while I eat lunch in the office.

I mainly use it to plant seeds to maybe get people to think for a change rather than just swallow all the drivel from the main line news media. Many times I will put in a quote or two that are relevant to our country and where we're at.

It amazes me how inconsiderate, rude, vulgar and disrepectful some people are. They say things online they would never say to a person face to face. Far too many people have lost, or never learned, the art of tact and diplomacy. Eventhough they may have valid points, the way they communicate builds walls rather than bridges.

An interesting use of social media, that a lot of people aren't aware of, is that factions within the government use it to keep a real time "pulse" on what the population is thinking.

I suspect that this is the reason that we see press conferences several days after a given incident. What is said during these press conferences is not based in reality at all, but rather, what a majority of people will believe. Through FB and twitter, they are able to gauge the success of these falsehoods taking hold. If the social media majority begins to question, the talking points are tweeked to bring them back in line.

The most recent "glaring" example, was calling the Benghazi attack a "spontaneous" attack that was set off by a youtube video. I'm guessing that many of our citizens still accept this as the final word, and the absolute truth.

K, it's a use all right, but I'd characterize it as something other than "interesting." And it's only a measure of what the population on FB and TW are thinking. Is that representative of what the majority is thinking? A year ago I would have said no. Now I have no idea. It sure as hell isn't representative of what I am thinking, but I'm wondering if I am now in the minority on a lot of issues. In any case, I'm not on FB. I think it's a waste of time, and I don't want the world (and the government) to know all the details of my life. Plus I'd have to have an ego the size of Alaska to think that even my relatives and closest friends are interested in knowing that I just had a gourmet pizza for dinner, and seeing a picture of it before I ate it. That's the level of drivel my wife sees come in on her FB page.

jhammond

Like anything, that kind of social "tracking" can be used for good or bad. I believe I read something about the CDC running an app that tracked the use of the word "flu" in FB and twitter, in order to help them track potential flu outbreaks to geographical areas, and take appropriate measures. That would be a good use.

Unfortunately, there are very few good people in the Washington elite, and this software that was originally designed to track potential terrorist threats, is now being used to build profiles on each and every one of us.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324478304578171623040640006.html

If we include employment verification as part of immigration reform, these databases will include photos and work histories:

• Mandatory, phased-in electronic employment verification. The President's proposal provides tools for employers to ensure a legal workforce by using federal government databases to verify that the people they hire are eligible to work in the United States. Penalties for hiring undocumented workers are significantly increased, and new penalties are established for committing fraud and identity theft. The new mandatory program ensures the privacy and confidentiality of all workers' personal information and includes important procedural protections. Mandatory electronic employment verification would be phased in over five years with exemptions for certain small businesses. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/01/29/fact-sheet-fixing-our-broken-immigration-system-so-everyone-plays-rules

Edit: I almost forgot. Come January, the government will also have complete access to our medical records.

As with all sites it is what you make of it..I find facebook an excellent way to stay in touch with family and friends some who have been out of our lives for decades ...Sure some people flood their opinions and supporting pictures/articles etc..You don't have to read them..I flood the facebook site with articles i find illuminating be they applied or basic science,spiritual or philosophical and comment on news of the moment that has impacted me sufficiently to want to voice an opinion..During elections at whatever level i find it fun and surprisingly educational to discuss points of view etc...It is what you make of it and it is a unifying force on this planet more for good than self focused evil.

Agreed.

I love to debate, but don't particularly like dealing with people on a regular basis. The social sites allow me to have the best of both worlds. I have my house in the middle of nowhere, with no close neighbors; and when I feel like human interaction, I can just jump online. I can pick my subject matter based on who I feel like arguing with....if I present it, they will come.

I am sure many of you of you know the drill: log onto email [check], log onto Twitter [check], log onto Facebook [check], log onto LinkedIn [check], log onto another social network and another one, etc..... Why hasn't someone come up with an easier way to manage our social networks and aggregate them into one application.

Wait, not all hope is lost!

Over the past few weeks, I have been seeing many more tools offering social networking aggregation or mash up services. I think this will be one of the next 'big things' that we see in the social media/networking space.

It made sense that sooner or later we were going to require these services and I think it is great that this need has been addressed. With so many social networks that have been created to communicate with each other, it was becoming time consuming and ineffective to log onto each network individually and check to see who is saying what and where.

These SNS (social network services) mash up sites basically aggregate many of your social networks onto one application or web browser. I have had the chance to try a few of these apps and I think we are still at early adoption stage to say that any one application has it right. Some are too slow, some don't have access to enough networks, some are not available for mac (disgby.com - hope you see this), etc....