I’ve been AWOL for a bit ’cause I’ve been swamped with work, lazy and now have new perspective and focus on what I want this blog, my business, Poles Apart Design, and my career to be all about: social media. Social media seems like a buzzword, but really it’s not. Like any set of similar interconnected technologies, it’s a word that encompasses the entirety of a new trend with lasting powering. Specifically, social media simply means what it implies, socializing the way we interact on multiple electronic – for lack of a better word – platforms. Blogging, tweeting, facebooking (not a word, I know) and so forth are all part of this new world of mass communication in multi-million microcosms which seem to be available to zillions of people on thousands of platforms. I, like you, yes you reading this blog post, are in the social-media-sphere whether we like it or not, or whether we know it or not. Like some of you out there I was reluctant to define, or rather confine my world to or within any one phrase. But, phrases are just words that have relative meaning to, usually, concrete things in the real world.

For the past two years I’ve been working with a company that builds websites using WordPress as a CMS. Though the crux of any of the given websites I designed/developed are about blogging, I realized that really these sites are all about getting out “the message” about whatever the company’s about through a more focused channel, or set of channels, but still channels that are tendrils on the sprawling thing that is social media. Through blog posts, free white papers, twitter streams, facebook connections, pings, trackbacks, videos and so forth covering many possible ways for many possible clients/customers to get “the message”, whatever that message is. Looking to travel to Maui but don’t want to get gouged on pricing or hotels? Watch this video at our travel site, read this blog article, look at this tweet, and please, oh please, share this “message” with your friends, family, co-workers, that hot cashier at your favorite cafe. Share! Tweet! Record! Facebook it! Blipp it! Buzz it! Zippo, caca, daka it!

It’s funny that though I spent a couple of years working in the blogoshpere and in social media in general helping to design and develop sites for small companies and very large corporations to spread “the message” to their market demographics, I was never a big participator in many social networks. I was once bitten, now twice shy, by the so-called “friendster” years back which, unlike its name implies felt more like a meat market for wannabes and freakazoids (sp?) looking to hook up instead of everyday people with some sense looking to find genuine connections through an alternative, and back then, somewhat new channel.

But, and fortunately, the Interweb (my new word) and specifically the social-media-sphere has grown, matured and has a lot less need for me to cringe, scream and run the other way from cybercrazies. I have a facebook account which I use pretty much to keep tabs on friends far and wide and occasionally stalk an ex or two (kidding). I’ve got a twitter account with strangers following me (the latest in cyberstalking). I’m in and out of the blogosphere all the time. I work as a WordPress blog developer and designer. I work as a social media web design/developer. I email. I occasionally text (still not a big fan of this). And yes, I admit I have and love my iPhone and feel a limb missing when I don’t have it with me.

Take a bow social media, take these flowers…you’re a star. The world is your stage. And yes, finally I am a fan…and so are you whether you want to be or not…yes you, blog post reader.