I Raise My Fist at The Tech Gods

Or:
My Adventures Into Disappearing Text, and Social Media Faux Pas

Cowgirl and I feel the same way when it comes to making social blunders.

Okay, I'm not tech savvy. Some of my ignorance is my own fault--I have the dreaded never-read-the-manual-itis. Yup, I'll buy a phone, or a laptop, turn it on, and just start using it. Same with the blog. And facebook and twitter and... you get the point.

We'll say that I'm a hands-on learner. :)

As you can imagine, sometimes mishaps happen. So, my friend Jon and I decided that we would dedicate some blog time toward figuring out the ins and outs of social media and the technology behind it.

We need to figure out what we need to know to make social media work for us. And how to prevent the crashes and blunders and whatnots from happening.

For instance:

A few days ago, I wanted to figure out the goodreads thing. Simply because I wanted to review a great book. A clear way to support a writer is by giving them an honest rating on sites like amazon, smashwords, and goodreads. I want to do more of this.

So. I signed up. In the process, goodreads asked me something. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but I interpreted it (yup, red flag) as "do you want to see what you friends are reading and rating?". I clicked the 'sure thing' box. Unfortunately, my answer prompted goodreads to send an email to everybody in my address book asking if they wanted to be my "friend" on goodreads.

CTRL-Z, damn it. (Wouldn't that be great if it worked outside of the word document?)

I raise my fist at the tech gods.

Serious faux pas.

I don't know how you feel about those emails, but I was embarrassed, even more so since I hadn't intended to do it. By the way, it ranks number three on this list of the 'don'ts' in social networking etiquette.

Worse: the only way to fix it was to apologize, you know, by sending another email to everyone in my address book. Which felt like another invasion. So I just let it go. And hoped that people understood: I'm a tech moron, who can't follow simple directions. :)

What social media faux pas have you blundered through recently? What do you think about the "friend me" feature on these sites? What's your number one social networking etiquette rule? And--do you let a friend know when they are committing a faux pas?

Oh, and feel free to ask me out on goodreads. I'd love to be your friend. :)