twitter, blog, facebook, orkut, and other such www mysteries

We ushered in a new generation of technology in our house a few days back. My father experienced the joys of webcam chat and saw his grandchild for the first time. I had to set it up for him and explain to him that people were doing this a really long time before he even thought of doing it in our house.

So, I just joined twitter and managed to find my way around and it and even got addicted to it, at least for a bit. But to be honest, this online networking thingummy has gotten to me nowadays. It just seems like people are everywhere and you just cant escape them.

Lets start with facebook, shall we? I had joined facebook against all my friends better advice. "Its too confusing, it takes ages to open, you'll get lost in all those applications." I went ahead and joined and really, really liked it. It was addiction from day one. And not to sound too conceited or anything, but I am better acquainted with computers, the world wide web, social networking sites, uploading, downloading and other such complicated issues, than most of my chickie friends. You see, I had a computer way before anyone else did and even in school, people used to come over to my house to practise "Computer Applications" the most obsolete subject now, consisting of programming in DOS and Lotus 123.

Now, because of the presence of a working model of a computer in my house, I managed to play with that thing quite a bit and I soon realised that almost anything that is done on it can be undone. And that was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. One in which I even ended up naming my laptop. "Happy Singh Ji". Don't ask why!

But now, things have changed. Everything is so complicated. RSS feeds, tweets, pokes, applications, cross-links, its just so mind numbing and there have been times when I have just switched off my screen just so I could take a breather. In my profession, its imperative that you use "Social Media" for your clients. The impact is huger and wider, specially if you have to reach out to a target audience consisting mostly of "Urban Youth". We even have a Online Specialist in our office to help out with all of this.

Don't take me wrong, I do realise the need for all this. We need faster communication, paperless offices, accurate information retrieval and all that and I really DON'T have the patience to walk into a government bank and be expected to WRITE down an application!!!

But I still wish I could get a letter in the mail once in a while. And not just my mobile bill but a real letter. One written down by hand, with thought and effort. One that you could hold on to and tie up with a red ribbon. 50 years later I would take it out and show it to my grandchildren. And they would laugh and call me "silly ole granny."

There I go, becoming old-fashioned again!