Branding David

It is always interesting to me how I feel when I am disconnected from the Internet. I have come to depend on it for a myriad of things, and because of this, when I am disconnected, I feel like I am missing out on so many things I usually take for granted.

I listen to music through Last.fm. I watch video podcasts and television shows on a variety of sites. I play EvE Online, an online massively multiplayer game. My entertainment is almost completely online.

I communicate through instant messaging, Skype, Twitter and my blogs. I e-mail through Gmail. My tools for communication are completely online.

I work completely online, writing blog posts, editing WordPress installations, and promoting what I have written on various social media websites. My income, which pays the mortgage, is completely online.

It leaves very little of my life that isn’t connected to the Internet in some way. Without it, I feel disconnected from my entertainment, my communication tools, and my work.

I wonder how many other people are so dependent on the Internet that they feel as I do and what that really means about society, as I am sure this will only become more common as Internet becomes more ubiquitous. How do you feel when you are disconnected from the Internet? Does it bother you at all, or do you enjoy your time offline?

When I first heard about Twitter, I thought it was a stupid idea. If I wanted to talk to someone, I would e-mail them, or talk to them on some instant messaging service. Why would I leave what amounts to “status updates” on an external service for everyone to read?

I then registered for an account and gave it my best go at really using it. I wondered if it would be as addictive as people had said, but I found it to be distracting and fairly useless. People told me I was using it wrong. They said I wasn’t following enough people, nor the right people, and that I should be using a desktop client to keep up to date on what others were saying, and publishing my own thoughts.

I tried following more people. I tried to follow celebrities, people with lots of followers, names that I recognized, people that ran sites that I recognized, and even people in my local area, and it did become more compelling to use. I was interacting with hundreds of people, and even started to use my large base of followers to help me promote my articles in the social media scene.

Just like others, I asked politely for people to give a thumbs up on StumbleUpon if they enjoyed what I had written, and it helped bring in some traffic, but I started to feel overwhelmed.

I downloaded and installed various software onto my laptop that would allow me to organize information better, and interact with Twitter in a more efficient way, but I found it quickly becoming a time sink. I was distracted too often, trying to keep up on what hundreds of people were doing, and many of them were pushing out ten or twenty messages a day.

I quickly removed the software, and realized that I should only interact with Twitter when I had the time, or if I needed to publish something, and I started to feel better about my interactions with the site, but as weeks passed, I felt like I was missing something, and recently, I clued into what it was. I was missing out on hundreds of updates from all sorts of people. Some of them were important ones from my friends or people that I respected. A few were even business related, and could have lead to money making opportunities for me.

I realized then that I was following too many people. I couldn’t have conversations with my friends that I only connect to on Twitter because their updates were being pushed off the front page so quickly that I never even noticed them.

It is with that realization, that I have decided to create a new Twitter account that will be paired with this site. I will only follow around fifty people, and hopefully create deeper connections with all of them.

The big question I have now will be how that will effect everything that I have done. I have built up over five hundred followers on my old account, while I have five on my new one. Will people move over and follow me, knowing that I won’t follow most of them back?

Of course there are many more questions that will also come up over time, and I don’t know if this was the smartest move in terms of branding, but I do know that doing this will help bring back some enjoyment to my Twitter experience.

If you are interested in following me on Twitter, please check out my BrandingDavid account.

Recently, I attended the Blog World Expo in Las Vegas, and while in the city of excess, I noticed very few people seemed worried about the negative slide that has been occurring in the American economy.

Personally, I am very interested in what happens with the American economy, as it is strongly tied to the Canadian economy, and the economies of many nations around the world. While China is jokingly said to produce everything, the majority of the media content that I consume comes from the United States.

Economic shifts tie in strongly with being a web worker because advertising dollars are usually the first things to be reduced as belt tightening happens within a company, and a large percentage of the revenue being moved around online today to pay my own, and many other peoples, wages is directly related to advertising sales.

As a web worker, I feel as though we are in the height of the conference and events scene in my industry, with many companies spending thousands of dollars for a small booth at these events, and dozens of sponsors spending an arm and a leg to have their logo adorn the promotional materials and session halls. Will these events dry up as the economy shifts, advertising revenue slows, and bloggers pay is continually reduced for bloggers, freelance designers and other web workers?

Despite being a positive person and a bit of an idealist, I find the current outlook to be fairly bleak.

I hope that as the economy shifts, more businesses will realize that the web is an inexpensive way of reaching a wider audience, and so, as certain advertisers leave the table, or reduce their spending online, a new group of businesses will throw their money, in a cautious but substantial way, into advertising online and at conferences, events and trade shows.

How does a diminished American economy effect your bottom line? How will it effect the way you work, live, and network with your peers? If you are a speaker or consultant, how will it effect you in the short term?

Things are definitely changing, and more now than nearly any time in history, it may be time for both businesses, consultants and employees alike to evolve and adapt or struggle.