Text Messaging | that damn redhead

Little things like this make me love technology even more.

Yesterday my pal Robin of InnerMedia Coaching & Consulting and I took a field trip to Ann Arbor for one of the LA2M Marketing Meetings, whose speaker that day just happened to be one of my favorite people in all of Metro Detroit, the lovely, smart, and talented Ms. Shauna Nicholson, marketing manager for Biznet Internet Solutions in Wixom. She was leading a discussion on viral marketing.

Though I did RSVP on LA2M’s Facebook event page, I forgot to actually tell Shauna I was going to be there, and forgot to check to see if there was an official hashtag for the event. (I hadn’t been to one of these events before so I wasn’t sure.)

Robin and I were sitting at the far end of the room from Shauna. It was pretty packed, and there was a big table full of people in between us. I didn’t really want to get up just to ask her that, so what did I do?

I sent her a text message from across the noisy room:

is there a hashtag for this? #la2m?

I saw that she was just putting away her iPhone so I nudged Robin and said, “Watch this. . .”

Shauna suddenly looked at her phone, looked up, looked all the way down the long table of people and gave me an affirming nod.

I turned to Robin and said, “See? This is yet another reason I love technology!”

Today’s word, boys and girls, is “boundaries”

Silly me, I thought people understood what those were.

Let’s be clear about something here: Social media, for all its benefits, can have its pitfalls.

It is no secret that the meaning of the word “friend” has been immensely diluted, thanks in part to social media networks such as MySpace and Facebook. I mean, when The New York Times takes notice, you know it’s official.

This isn’t another post on another blog about social media netiquette. Frankly, I don’t care how you use Facebook or Twitter or whatever to connect with people, whether strictly business, strictly personal, a combination of both, or to promote your cousin’s pickle factory. Really. But there’s a difference between a netiquette faux pas and crossing the line into people’s personal boundaries, and recently I’ve seen it happen more than once.

And it needs to be addressed.

[Read more...]