Guest Blogger Tina Merritt

Tina is a good friend of mine who is a Real Estate Agent & Internet Marketing Trainer for Long & Foster Realtors, Founder of Wolkia a consulting company for Real Estate Agents embracing Technology, Activerain Blogger, Awesome Mother & a Virginia Tech Hokies fan.

I was honored to have her guest blog on my post with this re-blog below on Social Network Friendships.  Enjoy!

It seems every site nowadays gives you the opportunity to follow “friends”.

So, what type of “friends” are there?  Let’s take a look….

1. True friends.  People you personally know.  People you talk to at least once per month.  The people who probably know way too much about you.  The people who you would have to pay to be silent if you ever decided to run for public office.

2.  Business Associates.  Colleagues you do business with on a regular basis.  Maybe you work in the same office.  Maybe they have done your loans/home inspections/closings for the past 5 years.  People who know you personally, but probably don’t REALLY know you.

3.  Clients.  Past, present, future.  You handled a business transaction for them 3 years ago, haven’t talked to them since – but that doesn’t mean they don’t like you.

4.  Former classmates.  Gary the Geek, Popular Priscilla, Doug the Druggie, Wanda the Weirdo….you know what I mean.  The old boyfriend who is now married with 3 kids or your best friend from 7th grade.

5.  Social Networking friends.  This gets tricky.  People you have never met face to face but have watched on YouTube, read their blogs, subscribed to their feed, etc.  People you feel like you know – though you have never personally met.

6.  Acquaintances.  People you have heard of, or they have heard of you – though you really do not know much about them.

7.  Circle of Sphere.  People who know people you know.  You may or may not ever get to actually know them.

8.  Strangers.  The friend request you get that you accept and the person is some guy who builds skateboards out of his garage in Brazil.  You have absolutely nothing in common….and probably never will.

When deciding who to “friend”, keep this in mind…..what is the purpose of the site you are on and who are you trying to connect with?  Very often, your “friends” will take a look at the others you have “befriended”.  Be careful here….if you are using Facebook for business, do you want Boobalicious Brenda or Boozing Bernie to show up in your friend feed? Also, periodically check out your “friends” – you may be surprised what their new profile picture looks like and how it can reflect back on you.

Tina in Virginia

Post from: Social Media Vision

Boobalicious Brenda – Who Are Your 8 Types Of Online Friends ?

Don’t Be Corrupted By Social Media Slang

What is Social Media Slang?  Slang are informal words and language not associated with the standard/common language we use in society.

Social Media Slang is picked up mainly from communicating in Social Media.  When communicating within Social Networks like Facebook and Twitter, you are often presented a short amount of space to relay information to convey to the other user involved.

Shortcuts, Abbreviations and L337 Speak are often concocted from the quick and short communication avenues.

Early Social Media Slang

Before Twitter and Facebook wall posts and status updates there was AOL and chat rooms with instant messaging.

AOL is known for the grand daddy of Internet slang creation and was the start of the early trendsetter of rapid short communication shortcuts. L33t Speak and Acronyms were heavily used back in the AOL days.  

L337 Speak had AOL users writing words like:

/\/\ 0 n3 Y = Money

MiCrOsoFt = Microsoft

4 replaces A, 3 replaces E, 7 replaces T 1 replaces L, and $ replaces S, 13 replaces B are just a few more examples.  L337 speak is still widely used in Video Games still.

Acronyms or the “Text Talk” is very popular still too.  Some examples are below

U = You  2 = Too  TTYL = Talk to you later  LOL = Laughing out loud 4 = For R = Are O= OH

Corruption of the English Language

With chat rooms and instant messaging slowing losing traffic and more and more users are Texting and using Social Networks now to communicate, Internet Slang now has transformed to Social Media Slang.

These are English Teacher’s worst nightmares.  These shortcut slang talk can corrupt your Business and Education.

Just because its easy to do to just “slang talk” or “text talk”, try to still practice good communication and not fall victim of Social Media Slang.  You don’t want to write a proposal for a client that has this below:

“Hello wut do u want 2 do today? plz let me know, k, ttyl”

This of course is very unprofessional and can be detrimental to your etiquette.  Although this seems like commons sense more and more professionals are caught with “Social Media Slang”

Just like with your personal profiles, keep your online etiquette very professional aswell and don’t fall to the corruption of shortcuts and slang.

Post from: Social Media Vision

Don’t Be Corrupted By Social Media Slang