I went to work today and forgot my phone. Being separated from my phone for 8 hours has given me a greater appreciation of my phone.

The fact that we call iPhone’s “phones” is actually kind of funny because who actually uses the phone feature on their iPhone? I know I hardly do.

Let me count the ways as to why I love my i”Phone”

1. it’s my camera and a darn good one thanks to the Camera+ app. Taking & sharing photos makes me happy.
2. it’s my connection to Twitter. Talking to my Twitter friends makes me happy.
3. it’s also my connection to Facebook and Google+ where I like to post my photos.
4. it’s my newspaper. I read the news every morning on my iPhone via Twitter and the various news sites.
5. it’s my Words With Friends connections. I play Words With Friends with my friends and my mom, when I remember. Most people who play Words With Friends with me get annoyed with me because I take SO long between each turn.
6. it’s my FourSquare checkin tool. Without my phone, I can’t checkin at FourSquare and then my friends take advantage of the situation and pass me. (please note #3 in picture below)
7. it’s my text message center. I can’t chat with my sister on my lunch break with out my iPhone.
8. it’s where I check my personal email.
9. it’s my calendar.
10. it’s my notepad where I jot down movies I want to see, books I want to read, etc.

I missed my phone today.

Photo taken by @fun_master

Yep another blog post about Google+

Bring back MySpace! Okay how ridiculous does that sound? Remember MySpace? I don’t know about you but I embraced MySpace wholeheartedly. I blogged at MySpace, I reconnected with my old friends from high school, I made new friends, discovered new music, decorated my page to be all sparkly and pretty and I resisted Facebook. I resisted Facebook like a cat sliding down a curtain with its claws out. I did not want to change, I did not want a new social network, I was happy with MySpace, why did we need to change?

I reluctantly opened a Facebook account because my teeny bopper daughters wanted to be on Facebook and the deal was, the only way you can be on Facebook is if I am your friend on Facebook. So, I joined Facebook as a “responsible parent” move. Then of course, I got hooked. I was managing both MySpace and Facebook and slowly my MySpace friends trickled in to the Facebook scene. Facebook started suggesting friends and a whole new world of old friends reappeared in my life. Reconnection was fun! At the time, I had a Virtual Assistant business that I was somewhat bored with so I morphed it in to a marketing business and started teaching entrepreneurs how to use Facebook and preaching the benefits of it for business.

I posted this on MySpace in October 2007. Just replace the world MySpace with Facebook or Twitter and Facebook with Google+ and it sounds like a lot of people I know right now.

10/19/2007
Can someone please tell me why Facebook is so popular these days? I resisted going over to Facebook because frankly it was not a priority in my life… but I finally folded under social pressure and headed over there. Everyone swears it is so much easier and more intuitive than Myspace… I’m not seeing it that way. But I do see that a lot of serious business owners are using Facebook. For now, I will continue with both. I still like Myspace better… so if you are like me and are on both Myspace and Facebook feel free to be my friend over on Facebook too.

Then came Twitter and as many of you know I got a little obsessed. I love Twitter and the people on it Twitter. Twitter is the ultimate social network, it’s actually social at least my crowd is. Twitter introduced me to people (strangers) with similar interests who are now some of my best irl = “in-real-life” friends. I love Twitter and I am very loyal to Twitter but I also know in the world of technology – CHANGE is the reality. Ever since my MySpace world evaporated I’ve always kept it in the back of my mind how very likely it is that someday Facebook and (gasp!) even Twitter may go away. This does not mean I want them to go away, it’s just life in the modern world.

Fast forward to Google+. Just like when Facebook arrived on the scene I resisted it. The main reason is TIME – I don’t have time for another social network. Then the “why would I want to go to another social network when all of my friends are already on this one” factor. Finally, I personally did not find G+ to be intuitive or user friendly so I resisted, I complained, I made fun of it. I did exactly what I did 4 years ago. I also found the original Google+ community, the one’s who like to call themselves “early adopters” to have an attitude. G+ was getting defined as the intellectual network, the content driven one where people put important smart stuff. I actually felt pressured to only post smart, intellectual things. The first handful of people in my G+ stream seemed to be competing to who could post the most intellectual crap. I’m so over intellectuals – stopped being impressed with them about when I graduated from college. Don’t get me wrong, I admire smart people, I just don’t admire people who like to tell me they are smart.

But then something happened, I saw this video:

As silly as this video is it reminded me of my MySpace stubbornness and also opened my eyes to some of the cool features of G+.

Then last weekend I had something I rarely have these days. I had TIME! I had some down time where I didn’t have to do anything so I spent some time getting to know Google+. Up until this weekend I kept thinking and saying G+ is boring and nothing is happening over there. I then had the realization that Nothing is going to happen on G+ unless I do something on it.

I was just sitting around waiting for everyone else to do something. Duh everyone else was doing the same thing! So I started doing things on G+ and guess what? People started responding.

I still love Twitter, and Facebook is just fine but here are a few things I’ve discovered about G+ that I like.

Circles – I can easily divide people in to groups. I can have friends, coworkers, family, strangers, etc. This means I can look at updates by groups and I can also post to selective groups. If I want to post something personal like a picture of my kids and I don’t want my coworkers, strangers and others seeing the pic, I can set that post to just show to my family circle and they are the only ones who see it.

G+ also could come in handy for coordinating things such as carpools. Last night on Twitter a group of us were trying to coordinate carpools for our upcoming TweetUp. We must have exchanged 20+ tweets to do this most likely boring the heck out of our followers and in the process getting somewhat confused on who was doing what. If we would have had the same discussion on G+ we could have done it in 1 thread and only those involved would have seen the thread, we wouldn’t have had to bore the rest of the world with our logistics.

Also, for all you amateur photographers out there check out the photo sharing, it’s pretty cool. One of my favorite professional photographers is sharing her stuff on G+. Check out:  Lisa Bettany (the inspiration behind all my photos from the bus)

I’m not going to go on and on with the wonders of Google+ because frankly I don’t see a huge benefit yet to switching over. However I am constantly fascinated by the ever changing world of social networks and thought I’d share my 2 cents with you since people have been asking me “what is the point of Google+?”

I guess you could call me an early resister in the world of social media.

So… do you wanna connect on G+? Here I am:  Sally_K

By the way… Tom, (you know the founder of MySpace) thinks G+ is going to succeed.

My truth about blogging.

There is a rumor out there that bloggers make a lot of money selling advertisement. As far as I know that is not true. There are a handful of bloggers that make some money selling advertisement and maybe a few that make a decent amount. I’d love to hear how they define “a lot”.

In my case, I was never able to make money from blogging. I have sold some advertising here and there which amounts to enough money to cover the cost of hosting the site and a few coffees and maybe a meal or two (in the whole time I’ve been blogging). This money does not cover my time to blog or the cost of paying a specialist (or two) to fix my blog that got hacked.

But I don’t blog to make money. I blog for fun. I blog to motivate myself to try new things. I blog to celebrate local independently owned businesses. At least that is why I started blogging.

As a blogger (and a tweeter) I have put in lots and lots and lots of time talking about local businesses, promoting local events, organizing events that bring lots of new customers to local businesses, introducing locals, tourists and visitors to local businesses they would have never found if it were not for my blogging and tweeting, etc.

I blog for fun. I organize TweetUps for fun. I talk about local businesses that I think are great because I want to support them. There comes a time though when you give and give and give and when the people you are giving to don’t stop to say thank you, you get a little frustrated. Or at least I do. I’m not Mother Teresa. I’m someone working full time, raising 3 teenagers, dealing with family drama, repairing a house that got flooded by sewage, dealing with this blog that got hacked by a horrible pharmaceutical hack, a lesbian living in a straight world and basically just another overwhelmed Bay Area citizen. As beautiful as the Bay Area is it is also a rat race and it is not so easy to keep up here. The cost of living here is very, very high! Have you looked at your grocery store receipt lately?

I digress… the point of this post is… I don’t know where my blog is going. Right around when it got hacked, I got a little burned out. I got tired of all the gimme, gimme, gimme emails such as: can you promote this, can you organize a TweetUp at our place of business, can you feature me on your blog, can you promote my book, can you do this, can you do that? I know it’s my fault, I offered to feature businesses, organize TweetUps, etc… but the lack of gratitude has turned me in to a bitter blogger and I don’t want to be a bitter blogger! I’m generally a positive person and I’d like to continue being that way.

I’ve organized a ton of TweetUps and for the most parts the restaurants have not given me much appreciation. Some were better than others in offering the group complimentary hors d’oeuvres, welcoming us and saying thank you. Others acted inconvenienced that I was bringing 20 people to dine at their restaurant. Even though I had given them lots of advance notice.

Am I being a diva? Am I expecting too much? If I were a business owner and someone with a following was saying nice things about my business and bringing me lots of new clients I’d probably send them a little thank you note and maybe even a gift certificate. What would you do?

I don’t know what direction my blogging is going to go in but I think I’m done giving free promotion to businesses that don’t seem to understand or appreciate it. I mean if I happen upon a restaurant that is extra amazing I just might blog about it. I’ll continue to coordinate random TweetUps because I love my tweeps so much but I think I may turn this blog more in to a rambling of my thoughts around the Bay Area.

Keeping it real,

@Sally_K