Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, oh my!

[rebeccaC]

And if I hadn't been on Twitter recently I wouldn't have known that Neil Gaiman is currently in Syria, and will be coming to Norway in a week. The first is rather heartbreaking, the second is making me a little giddy.

Well that generated a interesting conversation at work about The Sandman series .

According to a colleague at work he's researching Syrian refugee camps in Jordan, yes heartbreaking! Maybe a book or doc.

[lph]

Rebecca, check out the 4 minute interview the BBC news did with him, he's reposted it. It's very moving.

Crankin, Twitter has just as much, or as little, to do with popular culture as a newspaper does. It's there, alongside local and international news. The difference is that you can interact more. I follow Neil Gaiman because I enjoy his writing. Because of that I now know more about the refugee situation in Syria on a personal level than I would ever have learned otherwise. I can ask him, or any of the other people who were there with him direct questions about the experience, and have a fair chance of getting an answer.

Instagram I'm not that interested in. I have a few friends who enjoy photography and use it a lot more than other social media, so it's a way of seeing what they're up to.

eta: One of the major bonuses of Instagram, and Twitter probably too, is the chance of stumbling over something or someone really interesting just by chance. I was browsing Instagram one day, just looking at good photos, and via via via saw a photo of something that looked like a tame cheetah. It was, and his owner is Saudi, and he hunts with it. He also does big game hunting in poor areas of Africa, and gives away the meat to poor families. He posts under the name saudhunter. No matter how you may feel about hunting, this is a pretty interesting and unusual guy, and guaranteed someone I would never have heard of otherwise.

[Crankin]

I guess I just want to read the news. No desire to interact.
I do discuss current events with my DH and a couple of friends, but that's it.
I am not sure why I don't enjoy looking at photos or listening to music. I can appreciate good art/music, but as far as photos go, I don't really see the artistic part of it. DH likes photography and always needs to have the newest camera, for reasons that seem silly to me. I know I sound like a weirdo, but I think it's just I can't sit long enough to really look at stuff.

[shootingstar]

I enjoy looking at art and some people have impressive blogs of their own art. however for travel photography, after a few spectacular photos, I get bored..especially for photography the person doesn't bother to name the place that I'm looking at or explain abit about their photos.

Twitter is too short for my taste. ok to notify someone about something new on a web site or blog. But I don't pay much attention to twitter feeds.

[Irulan]

eta: One of the major bonuses of Instagram, and Twitter probably too, is the chance of stumbling over something or someone really interesting just by chance.

haha, excellent excuse for surfing the web as I have ever heard.

[lph]

This may amuse some of you so I'm spreading the word: a couple of days ago a friend of mine and I were griping about body fixation and pictures of perfect bodies everywhere in ads and the media, and the unperfect, "real body" movement too, actually. We pretty much agreed that when it came to people we actually looked up to and were interested in, how their bodies *looked* was probably the most uninteresting side of them. About as uninteresting as, say, our socks.

So we agreed to a very very small protest movement. On Instagram for a week or so we'll be posting really boring pictures, probably socks, tagged #****perfectbody and #bpotd (boring picture of the day). Feel free to join us :-D

(Pardon our language, we weren't thinking it would go beyond our Instagram followers).

eta: Yup, it got starred out. Well, it's the fourletter word that begins with f and ends with a k.

[shootingstar]

Sounds like a great social media share, lph. Anti-perfect body, etc.

I'm always amazed how some bloggers don't know what to write about. Honest, a squirrel is boring to probably many North Americans, but our variety of squirrels doesn't exist world-wide. Even cycling socks is a real novelty in other social circles. Not that I want to spend more reading about sock experiences/reviews.

I actually don't read blogger cycling diaries. I prefer the blogger choose a topic and write it in a captivating way. Twitter doesn't offer this at all. Facebook?