On Becoming a Social Butterfly

As Aldous Huxley would say, it's a brave new world. This brave new world is the world of social media platform building. When the industrial revolution brought thousands of people to together to work in factories and live in neighborhoods, it didn't automatically create cohesive communities. People had to make an effort to connect with their neighbors, or attempt to create friendships with co-workers. One could choose to remain as isolated as one wanted. Thanks to recent technological advances, we now have an opportunity to connect with people we've never met, creating an endless number of virtual communities. The Internet was a giant step for mankind which, in my opinion, was more monumental than landing on the moon.

I've had several email addresses in the past five years, and I've even had a blog site for over a year. I didn't really take my blog seriously. I think the reason for this is, even though I am a writer, I've never been one for journaling. I had a one-sided perspective of blogging. It took attending a writer's conference for me to wake up and smell the roses. I learned that as a novelist, I will be responsible for promoting my own novel. Thus, the need for a social media platform. I need to become known not only in the literary world, but also in all the communities that value good writing skills. At first, I rebelled, screaming "NO, it's too complicated, too time consuming!" I've surrendered and am now headed down the road to Twitter, Plaxo, and Linkedin, wondering what amazing things the future holds for me.