The Secret to the Next Big Thing in Social Networking

I don't go on Google+ much partly because I don't really understand it. I find myself going round in circles; literally and what's with all the subgroups and circles within circles? It reminds me of a when I was forced to draw Venn diagrams in maths. I could never see the point but whoever has come up with the site Fuck Yeah Venn Diagrams on Tumblr seems to be rather keen on them.

This site has got me thinking. Not just about Venn diagrams of the most exotic and sexy kind but about Tumblr generally. I'm not really sure what it is but should I join? I'm a sucker for joining clubs I know little about. The scouts took me unawares;  it was years before I could to escape from their sinister clutches. And what about that time on a press trip in DC when I was almost persuaded to join the Hare Krishna because the girl who collared me was pretty and I rather fancied the idea of hanging out in some commune in India for a couple of years. In the end their bad taste in clothes put me off. Their singing was pretty bad too.

I suppose Hare Krishna was a prototype kind of social network but when you use the contemporary social networks you don't get to stare at people's hairy feet much. Unless you are friends with hobbits who like to post footy pics.

Still I have social networking angst. I work for people who want me to get their message out on the latest social network but I'm not sure what it is. Facebook has been with us so long it's like an ingrowing toenail. We check on it a lot but there is little pleasure particularly as it's populated by dozens of people from old jobs who we don't like anymore who are always posting mindless nonsense about Tim Tebow and other football players.

Twitter has grown on me because it's quick and doesn't involve such a lot of interaction. You quickly tweet something, often automatically, and get out of there. It's like putting your head into a room of stuffy old executives, telling them they suck and getting off the premises with no adverse consequences.

So the time is right to stumble on (I think this is the name of a social network too) the next big thing in social networking. My good friend and last link with the world of young people, Jennifer, tells me Pinterest is for girls to post girl things.

Actually blog friends are a good social network and one I don't use enough. But I try to take a few minutes on a Sunday to skim read blogs and to concur that 45 isn't old Robyn, although when I was a kid I assumed I would die a geriatric at 30.

Blog followers are great because they provide a window into other people's lives. I would really not have known Megan dressed as a pirate at school had I not checked out A Daft Scots Lass. Had I not read Pearl Why You Little I would be blissfully unaware of the practice of "butt dialing."

But this really strikes a cord because I do butt dial sometimes and unfortunately it's usually to a very bad tempered, former council member called Barry whose last scheduled conversation about three years ago contained the expression: "I'm going to sue you."

Reading Daisy's blog makes me feel unvirtuous and aware that I should do some community work, in the five seconds I have during the day when I am not searching for the next big social network.

Jayne's Suburban Soliloquy never fails to blow me away on a Friday night. "Places saturated in deep alluvial and poseidon hues, where prismatic skies swirl and lime-coated mountains plummet madly into ravines."

I have never heard of Newark, NJ described in such terms before.

Tim Riley takes me back to the world of education - The whole intrinsic vs. extrinsic thing. Emm in London  makes me think of those blue remembered hills. Happy Frog makes me think of lots of random things, but mainly Champagne and drinking. And St. Bloggie de Riviera, those exotic times in Monaco, which was so expensive the only place we could eat was outside McDonald's where the local seagulls decided to show their disdainful attitude at our cheapness by unloading on us from a great height.

Seriously there are so many good writers out there, like Rek from a Chronicle of Dreams, and Li from Flash Fiction, and I often take them for granted and fail to read them because they are parked there on the blog roll.

There are probably a lot of us out there parked on a great virtual blog roll, waiting for our next big chance or a parking ticket, dreaming idly of our names being written large in fuzzy fluorescent letters on a virtual cloud up and the very top of the blogisphere. It's probably a bit like standing on the sidewalk on a rainy November night in Newark, NJ, waiting for a big yellow taxi to take us somewhere else, although we don't know where.

In the end, as Deborah from Fashion Plate points out it's all about words. But words are contradictory little constructs that can have many meanings and I don't know for the life of me why we send so many of them spinning out there like big old irresponsible slabs of space rock that may hit or miss their targets.

Given my increasingly disjointed life that contains a myriad of different demands, I have no idea why I signed up to the A-Z challenge again - maybe a lonely impulse of delight drove to this tumult in the cyber clouds. But at least I know I have the support of Sue from Traverselife and L from Nubian, when she's not taking pictures of elephants' arses in South Africa.

So when you have such fantastic people, as well as many others I have failed to mention, in your blogisphere why do you need to find the next new thing in social networking?

The same could be said about the South Pole. Was there a reason why men had to perish to find a few feet of snow that looked the same as any other two feet of snow? Only Captain Scott has the answer and 100 years ago today he was dragging his feet back from the pole, only to perish a few days away from safety.

I'm going away from the computer now. I may be gone some time.