I started using feed readers around 2006 to keep up with the burst of blogs that suddenly permeated the internet. It was all the craze then, and everyone had a blog. My feed reader consisted mostly of friends and fellow bloggers that I met through the Project Petaling Street community. It was a brave new world then.

Nowadays, most of my friends have stopped blogging, and their section in the feed reader is woefully silent. The feeds that are updated the most are usually informative blogs, and other websites that use RSS feeds.

If my feed reader was a coffee shop, it’s an entirely different crowd now. There are a few regulars from the old days, but the place is mostly buzzing with a different type of read and feed now.

Things have changed.

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Those lists are entertaining, and do have a massive ring of truth to them, but they seem to come across as “don’t do this, it’s annoying.” If you used those lists as a guideline to what not to do on Facebook, you might as well delete your account and have no social media presence. Silence is the least annoying option.

If you’re going to be on social media, it’s inevitable you’re going to annoy someone. And that all those Facebook user type lists are all written with a bias , depending on the type of Facebook user writing them (and mostly by the crusty old media stereotype writer).

So to me, I say “be yourself”. If you annoy one person, who cares. After all, Facebook wouldn’t be one great melting pot if we didn’t have all kinds. If you annoy tons of people, okay….maybe there’s something there you should really fix.

Now that we got that out of the way, here’s my biased list examining the type of people that sign up for Facebook:

1. The businessman – He read somewhere that he could leverage it for business, and then got an account and started brainstorming of ways he could use it to make money and generate leads, but complete missed the point of it being a “social network”.

2. The parent - Got an account because a younger (but not kids age young) relative sent them an invite to show off family photos. Doesn’t really know how to use Facebook, until their kid shows them the joys of Pet Society and Farmville.

3. The academic - see Businessman. Also is on it out of curiousity, and because everyone and their dog is talking about it, so they decided that they’d better write a thesis on it before a rival academic does.

4. The genuine friender – Migrated from Friendster/Hi5/other older social network when everyone on their “friend” list started doing so, mainly to keep in contact with all their friends. Thinks all the above are old fogeys going gaga at a novelty site. Facebook is a product of their generation, so pardon them if they feel a sense of ownership of social media and all that jazz. (And here’s Time sticking it back on behalf of old fogeys).

5. The meet-new-people-er – Joined Facebook because they needed more friends, not because they wanted to connect with existing ones. You’ll usually find them friending a female with a decently good-looking profile picture going, “Can I be your friend?”

So there’s my unabashedly biased list.

And I might just write my also unabashedly biased list of Facebook etiquette rules one of these days.

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I know that work seems to be impeding my blogging, but I’m stubbornly making it a point to blog because I work as a social media consultant, and therefore must participate and experiment on my own as well, and not talk out of my ass when advising clients.

I’ve also learnt a couple of things about my own social media participation lately as well. At first, I was all for social media integration, but lately I’ve been wondering whether it’s wiser to separate your social and work accounts. But that, my dear readers, is for another post.

And I’ve been wondering whether I should open up more on this blog as well. Longtime readers will probably notice that the passion and fire and brimstone is acutely missing here, just because I’m quite wary that this is the blog that I’m marketing “me” on. But I don’t think this blog is worth it’s name without it’s original soul, is it? So that’s something else to try in this experiment.

Anyway, I’ve had a couple of topics lined up lately. I’ve also been brainstorming for content for the company to package, because I feel that I’ve a lot to share and teach. And even if I don’t get it (I hope I do!), putting my ideas down in writing has given me even more content for this blog.

Now the question is when am I going to write them?

Here are some tentative topics:

1. More Abbreviations 101
2. Should you separate your social media accounts for work and play?
3. What browser would suit you?
4. Review of the Seashell Asus Eee PC (I just bought one! Yay to finally be able to do work over a cup of coffee in a nice Cafe!)
5. And much much much much more on social media and business, depending on how things pan out for work, and the content that I’ll develop or will have to keep company property.
6. And much more from myexperiences working as a waitress and in the newsagency job in Freo. I love Freo; there’s just so many little things about the city.
7. And, possibly reworked posts from my older blogs, especially if they’re relevant.

And I WILL aim to write at least one post a week. Hold me to it.

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