Social Networking and an $8 Cell Phone
September 8, 2009 Want to know how connected I am? I have e-mail and internet here at the office and at home. I have a cell phone.
I recently had some problems with my flip phone. If you have a flip phone, you know what all that flipping will eventually do to the hinge. So I went down to my favorite cell-phone store to see if I could find one that didn’t flip and was the size of, say, a Snickers bar, but without the creamy milk chocolate outside and the nougat and peanuts on the inside. I had this conversation with the nice saleslady:
Me: “Do you have a phone the size of, say, a Snickers bar, but without the creamy milk chocolate outside and the nougat and peanuts on the inside? I just want one you can talk on and send text messages from.”
Nice saleslady: “You don’t want a camera phone?”
Me: “No.”
Nice saleslady: “You don’t want to be able to check your e-mail?”
Me: “No.”
Nice saleslady: “You don’t want to be able to surf the internet?”
Me: “No.”
Nice saleslady: “You don’t want to be able to download custom ring-tones?”
Me: “Do they ring otherwise?”
Nice saleslady: “Yes.”
Me: “Then, no.”
Nice saleslady: “So you just want a phone the size of, say, a Snickers bar, but without the creamy milk chocolate on the outside and the nougat and peanuts on the inside? You just want one you can talk on and send text messages from?”
Me: “Yes. How much?”
Nice saleslady: “Eight dollars.”
This is a more connected world that I’m in right now. Even my 92-year-old Dad has a cell phone.
I don’t fear technology in the least – I embrace it. It’s just that I stay plenty busy with Cotton Grower and Cotton International Magazine. Where will I find the time to get up to speed with anything new?
But I’ll have to find the time. Last spring, we took down the separate websites for the magazines and combined them into a “cluster site” that I’m most impressed with: www.cotton247.com. Online Editor Beck Barnes here in Memphis and the support staff in our home office in Ohio have done a marvelous job. I was surfing around the other day looking for some information and was amazed at how often the information I was looking for was on our site. Instead of surfing the web, I could have just surfed our site.
Now we’re ready to take the next steps.
It’s impossible for monthly magazines to give field days and international conferences the coverage they deserve. Now we have the capability to put video on the site from just about anything we cover in practically no time at all.
And Meister Media has delved into, and believes in, social networking using Facebook and Twitter. To date, I know this about them:
As for Facebook, I get e-mails inviting me to join friends’ pages, and I can do so with a simple click of a link. I don’t click. I figure if they’re my close friends, I already have enough information. If the invitation is from someone who is not my close friend, I don’t want more information.
As for Twitter, if someone had walked up to me in a bar not so long ago and asked, “do you ‘Tweet?’” they better be ready to defend themselves outside.
Beck set up our Facebook and Twitter accounts last week and we already have people having conversations with him, and I’m beginning to see the advantages of both. If I’m at Beltwide or the Gin Show and one of the economists says, “Boys, the cotton market is going to open at $1.50 tomorrow morning,” I can open our Twitter page and write, ““Boys, the cotton market is going to open at $1.50 tomorrow morning,” and those following us will see it immediately.
Ok, so soon I’ll be using Facebook and I’ll be Tweeting. But do not mess with my $8 cell phone.
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