New Post, Social Media: Your Next Personal Superpower (on Pro Photo blog)
In my earlier post about using social media, I discussed starting a blog and populating it with content that appeals to your customers. A blog is a great starting point. But don’t stop there, because you can use social media resources to reach tens of thousands of people in a way that builds your business and your understanding of your customers. –more–
Facebook has become, and I’m sure everyone would agree, the new social network for communication. A place where songs, photot’s, pictures & conversations pass freely, where friands can meet and be met, where realtionships can be found & mentalities uncovered.
But you what fascinates me about this new social network, this meeting ground for a new world? It’s the fact that no matter where you are, wether it’s virtual or real, you still get your village idiots. The people who don’t think before they act.
The darwins, as most people call them, are those few gifted individuals who will go beyond the boundriesof stupidity. Who will set new limitations for idiotic actions, behaviour. Why, I ask? I see this as a Dodo species. They lacked the self-preservation instinct, survival in tother words.
Do not fret though, I give it another couple years and there goes another Dodo species to the extinction line. guess it’s not that much of a loss.
During a recent meeting in Berlin of the international Steering Committee for Worldwide NET Awareness Day (WNAD) on November 10, 2010, Grace Goldstein of the Carcinoid Cancer Foundation had the opportunity to hear a fascinating presentation by Silja Chouquet, owner and CEO of whydot GmbH, an agency that specializes in social media consulting, coaching and training. Her fields of expertise are the creation of patient-focused social media communications and marketing campaigns. Ms. Chouquet’s passion for helping patients was evident when she talked about how neuroendocrine cancer patients could use social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, e-newsletters, and online forums, to connect with each other and to bring about greater awareness of their rare cancers.
Silja Chouquet, social media expert, patient advocate, and CEO of whydot GmbH
In her blog, whydotpharma http://www.whydotpharma.com/, she writes: “The Internet holds the power to profoundly change the way healthcare is delivered. Millions of patients, caregivers and physicians turn to the Internet every day to look up the latest information on important health topics and find support from like-minded people.” Pharmaceutical companies, she says, have a unique opportunity to show patients how much they care by being open and transparent. Ms. Chouquet believes that “a pharma company wishing to use social media to improve patient outcomes can only do so successfully if it manages to build trust, credibility and collaboration with the online community first.”
On behalf of the Carcinoid Cancer Foundation, Ms. Goldstein would like to thank Ms. Chouquet for “her extremely generous offer to help the carcinoid/NET community with social media for Worldwide NET Awareness Day.” Ms. Goldstein notes that Ms. Chouquet has “a very large following within the European and international social media and healthcare communities and her outreach to the rare disease community will have a huge impact in helping obtain greater exposure for Worldwide NET Awareness Day.”
Visit Ms. Chouquet’s blog, find her on Twitter at @whydotpharma or on Facebook and LinkedIn at Silja Chouquet. Follow her musical choices at http://blip.fm/Silja.
You can also follow the Carcinoid Cancer Foundation on Twitter @CarcinoidNETs and at http://blip.fm/CarcinoidCancerFoundation.
So theres this guy I’m kinda really into lately, and he seems to be into me as well.
He was DJing at a club this weekend, and he told me like 3 times that he really wanted to see me and wanted me to come, so even though none of my friends were willing to go with me, I went alone. He finished his set and when he was done we hung out at the bar, and I thought things were going pretty well! We talked about all sorts of stuff, had some drinks, he even said he was really happy that I had come. He had his arm around me the whole time, and held my hand and stuff, and we made plans to go out the next weekend.
Now here’s the problem. This happened 2 days ago, today I am sitting on the 3rd day. I havent heard a peep from him since that night! Part of me wonders if the night really went the way I thought it did, or am I just remembering it wrong because of the alcohol? What if i said or did something, I don’t remember… Then another part of me thinks, wait, what if he’s doing that stupid guy rule of “wait 3 days.”
What do you think I should do? I’m just sitting here going totally crazy wondering what happened. I even invited him to my birthday event on Facebook ages ago, he hadnt responded to it, and then after that night, he put “Not Attending.” Gah! I wonder…
On Sept. 11, she suddenly left Leadville, Colo., a small town in the Rocky Mountains, for Denver, then for New York, to meet and marry a Muslim man she connected with online, her family says. Ms. Paulin-Ramirez, who is 5-foot-11 and blonde, phoned her mother and stepfather in Leadville, providing them with an address in Waterford, Ireland, they say.
Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, a 31-year-old mom, is in the custody of the Irish police, along with six other individuals, arrested as part of an investigation into a conspiracy to commit murder.
Now, she is in the custody of the Irish police, along with six other individuals, arrested as part of an investigation into a conspiracy to commit murder, according to officials familiar with the case. The nature of the authorities’ suspicions about Ms. Paulin-Ramirez couldn’t be determined on Friday.
Ms. Paulin-Ramirez’s interest in Islam “came out of left field,” said her mother, Christine Holcomb, in an interview at her home Friday, wearing a blue sweatsuit with a silver cross around her neck.
Ms. Paulin-Ramirez is the second American woman to be linked to an alleged plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist who made fun of the Prophet Mohammed. An indictment was unsealed this week against Colleen R. LaRose, 46, a suburban Philadelphia woman who authorities said used the Web alias “JihadJane.”
Ms. LaRose was accused of plotting to kill the cartoonist and attempting to recruit jihadis via the Internet. She was arrested in October and charged with providing material support to terrorists. The Justice Department kept its case under wraps until this week while investigators in the U.S. and Europe pursued their investigation against other potential suspects in the U.S. and abroad.
The main contact for Ms. LaRose is believed to be one of the men in Irish custody, an Algerian, who has a relationship with Ms. Paulin-Ramirez, according to a person close to matter. A person close to the Irish police couldn’t confirm whether Ms. Paulin-Ramirez and the Algerian are married. Ms. LaRose spent roughly two weeks in Ireland last fall, a person familiar with the matter said.
The Irish police are holding four men and three women, including three Algerians, a Croatian, a Palestinian, a Libyan and a U.S. national, according to a person close to the police. They are being questioned and haven’t been charged. A U.S. official familiar with the matter confirmed that Ms. Paulin-Ramirez is the U.S. national. The Justice Department declined to comment.
In the months before Ms. Paulin-Ramirez left Leadville, taking her 6-year-old son but little clothing or other belongings, she began “wearing the black garb so you can only see her eyes,” her aunt said. “We knew that she was dabbling in the Muslim religion. But for her to disappear like this was from left field–we weren’t expecting it at all,” said Ms. Jones, who until last fall would speak to her niece on the phone almost every day. Ms. Paulin-Ramirez had begun spending more time on the computer, her mother complained to the aunt. “All of a sudden, she stopped talking to me and she disappeared,” Ms. Jones said.
In 2008 or 2009, Mr. Mott said, Ms. Paulin-Ramirez enrolled in an online course about Islam.
By Easter 2009, she had informed her mother that she was a Muslim. At her father’s May 2009 funeral in Kansas, her aunts had to plead with her not to cover her head and hair with a hijab. Over the summer, her family says, she was spending increasing time on the computer and had begun to dress in the traditional garb, covering not only her hair and face but also her hands. Her current Facebook page lists her as Jamie Paulin, with a photo in which all that is visible are her eyes peering from slits in her full-face veil.
A few months before she disappeared, her stepfather says he confronted her: “What are you going to do, strap a bomb on and blow up something?” he asked her. He recalled that she responded: “If necessary, yes.”
I realized that I had trumpled off to another irrelevant topic on my posting titled “GoodBye USA” . And, I just received a couple private comments regarding the post, therefore I have chosen to remove some parts of it . But don’t worry – for those of you who liked the Gladys Ave. picture.. it’s still going to stay right there. And I have decided to un-link my wordpress from LinkedIn and Facebook, in which my professional work shall remain separate from my personal one.
Cheers,
Gladys
Nothing worth writing has happened to me this week. However, today I received a weird message from some guy on Facebook. This made me think of how many messages like this I’ve received since I’ve lived over here. Receiving messages like this has become pretty routine but it still amazes me that these people waste their time writing! Even, I’m not bored enough to even think of replying.
Anyway, today’s message was:
“Hi friend, good morning , how Are you? really you so nice friend , i hope we will become best friend ,just i want to ask you, where you from?take care , you have nice day” It is amazing to me that this guy thinks I’m a “nice friend” and wants to be my “best friend” when he knows nothing about me and has never even met me!
As I really didn’t have anything more exciting to do, I decided to find a few older examples to include here too. I’ll start with the weirdest of the bunch:
“Hi Amanda,
I was looking on facebook about any one have read this book “The Sad Truth” to tell me what their opinion about it. I just not a very good since of picking up the right book and my problem is if I start to read a book I have to finish it even if it was boring!!
My favorite books are:
- A thousands splendid suns
- Angels Ashes
- eat, pray, love
Sorry to send you this message without any interdiction.
Mohamed Salah”
Less than 24 hours later, he wrote again:
“Amanda,
I know there must be a hundreds of men hitting on you here on the facebook obviously because you are look pretty, but I really wanted to hear your opinion about that book.
Ignoring me is really not nice and makes me feel bad, you don’t wanna makes me feel bad, do you?
Mohamed”
So, I blocked him after the second message. How in the world did he expect me to respond in a timely manner if he thought I had hundreds of other messages to respond to?
Here are a few more examples:
“u look so cute… my name is shakil…living at abu dhabi…can u make me ur frnd pls…thnx.” [Interestingly, the name on the profile was Nasir.]
“hi how are you…. u r sooooo adorable 
“I am from India and working in UAE from last 10 months..i am with construction co. where r u working? coming week i will shift to Abudhabi. Friends?” [Well, at least he told me something about himself. By the way, people here often say “shifting” instead of “moving.”]
“hello amanda. how are you?
