SocialMedia Me

I have circles; we all have circles. If you were to narrow down to 5 the things that make me who I am online, you'd get an odd mix. This odd mix, in fact:

The Daytona Beach News-Journal
The newspaper where I spent about 9 years. Most of my Facebook connections are friends and former colleagues I met here. Many have since become like family and most have left the paper, but we're all still connected to it (no matter how much we hate to admit it).

Drake University, and my home town
I have smaller circles -- all roughly the same size -- from my new friends at LSU, my old friends from college at Drake University, and high-school and home-town friends from growing up in DeLand, Florida. This is the second-biggest area where I use Facebook -- as a personal and social tool. I use it to keep in touch with friends (mostly) and some family. 

LSU
Since I married into the LSU Political Science grad student association, this group and I all use Facebook to keep up with each other, plus we use the Groups function to coordinate outings/happy hours/events.


Knitting
My social graph has an element I'm sure most in my class won't have -- a little community called Ravelry. It's not a site that gets a lot of mention in the social media scene, I'm sure. But if you knit, or have anything to do with yarn, you know about it. You logon multiple times a day. Your stash of yarn is categorized and photographed here, you've compiled a much-too-long list of projects of which you may someday complete a fraction, and you've stalked other people's projects to see how certain patterns *really* turn out. It's a closed system, but its users are rabid and incredibly loyal. They don't care that you can't post directly to Facebook from here or Tweet their recent yarn find. Anyone who cares will already be on Ravelry, clicking that little heart-shaped button by your latest creation. Despite that, I still tweet more about knitting and freelancing (more on that below), than I do life in general.
 
Being a freelancer
This is where Twitter comes more into play. I tweet about freelance projects. I also use Twitter to follow people and organizations that relate to my freelancing personality. @ChicagoManual, @MightyRedPen, @MerriamWebster, @APStylebook, @APA_Style, @AmerMedicalAssn are all folks I make a special effort to pay attention to when they appear in my newsfeed.

So what: I need more time to really process what all this means, but for now I'm fairly happy with the way I portray myself out in cyberland. I tend to want to separate certain personalities -- keep the freelancing away from Facebook, and keep Facebook away from anyone who really doesn't know me personally. Will this have to change to brand myself well in the digital-verse? Probably. In the mean time, I'll be contemplating how to give myself a digital make-over while still keeping some of my identities compartmentalized.

Coming later this week: A better blog post than this one.