It is very easy to click a couple of buttons, type in a user-name, and create a blog in this day and age. Not just any blog, but a blog that has the capability to be seen by the entire world. There are many people writing online, and not all of it is necessarily good content... I'd never want to discourage anyone from writing, but so much that is written on the internet is malicious or has no substance. In Clark's How to Create Compelling content, when he talks about how important "keywords" are, of course that makes sense. Anyone trying to gain traffic to their blog needs to put in certain google-friendly phrases. What bothers me about it is when web-sites just have the google-friendly phrases, and content that is horrible. They are just sending people to their web-site for the sake of traffic, there is no passion behind what they're doing. I think people who write should care about what they are writing, and who is going to see it. Clark also speaks about how web-sites should attract the eye, which of course also makes sense, but is also bothersome to me. Online writing has become mostly about traffic, and pretty layouts, and things that have no depth to them. If a web-site just looks cool, people will flock to it, and it's irritating to know that.
I enjoyed, How you will change the world with social networking, because I know many web-sites that have been able to reach a vast audience for a good cause. I liked seeing how she garnered traffic to the "16 and love" campaign, and made it so welcoming, To Write Love on Her Arms is one of them. TWLOHA is a non-profit that helps people facing depression, anxiety, addiction, and suicide. The owner Jamie Tworkowski, and his employees write many incredible and emotional blog posts that can be related to by everyone. PostSecret is another one of my favorite web-sites. That is a project where people send in their secrets on homemade post cards, and a new batch of them are posted every Sunday. Such a community has been created through both of these web-sites. They have let so many people know that it is okay to be flawed, and have things we are ashamed of, because we aren't alone.
Examples of bad online content would definitely be yahoo news. I only have to suffer looking at their headlines when I check my Yahoo e-mail account once in a while, but I dread it every time. Their headlines are solely for shock-affect. They have articles about all of these ridiculous news stories for pure shallow entertainment. Whenever they talk about a celebrity, they always bash them or have their facts wrong, and I just want to know, WHO HIRED THESE PEOPLE? So obviously...I'm not a fan.
When it comes to social networking I prefer twitter over Facebook. It is just so clean and simple. On Facebook it feels like you could be clicking on profiles and going back to your newsfeed for an eternity. Twitter is just 140 characters, a short bio, replying and RT'ing others. It just makes me so much more happy than Facebook does.
By Allison Volpe
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