Tag…You’re It!

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Twitter is a rather unique online community that allows you to send quick “tweets” of 140 words or less to everyone who is interested in hearing what you have to say. You can use it to share anything, from notes about favorite online sites to quick messages to friends and family, even if you’re out and only have your cell phone with you.

I use it to let people know when I’ve posted a new article on SU Com, and sometimes to let people know about other neat events online. I’ve also found some interesting Twitters to follow. Three of my favorite ones aren’t even people. I love getting up to the minute updates of the NY Times, BBC news (which surprisingly sometimes has the scoop on events in the US before NYT does), and PBS Science. I also enjoy getting updates from many of my friends and other fellow bloggers…a couple that I like are Oza Meilleur of quotes on happiness (”Happiness is a Pig-headed Grandma“) and Dr. Mani of Money Power Wisdom.

This morning, Dr. Mani sent out a request on Twitter, asking for 5 bloggers who would be willing to answer 5 easy, short questions. I raised my hand and hollered, “Me, me, me!” then realized he couldn’t see or hear me, so I sent him a tweet instead.

So, I’ve been tagged to answer 5 easy (?), short questions…and then I get to tag 5 people to answer them. It’s the blogging version of all those “About Me” e-mails that I used to get at least 3 or 4 times a year. The nice thing about the blogging version is that it’s kind of fun to see all the links going backwards and forwards…kind of like when I tried to chase a picture to it’s source on StumbleUpon and ended up discovering several interesting stumblers in the process.

The questions:

1. How long have you been blogging?

2. What inspired you to start a blog and who are your mentors?

3. Are You trying to make money online, or just doing it for fun?

4. Tell me 3 things you LOVE about being online.

5. Tell me 3 things you STRUGGLE with in the online world.

The answers:

1. I started my SU page in April of 2005 and started three blogs (including SU Com which was then hosted on Blogger) a couple weeks afterwards.

2. What inspired me to start a blog…hmm. Will it sound silly if I say it was because my Bookmarks/Favorites folder was getting too full? I couldn’t find anything anymore, even with everything categorized in folders. I tried Del.icio.us for a while, but I really needed an easy way to tell why I was saving the link, because I had a tendency to save links with no other information, which really makes it impossible when you’re trying to find something 6 months later. StumbleUpon and Blogger both made it easy for me to post information I found interesting. At the time, I didn’t even think about sharing it with other people on the site, although I would occasionally send a link out to a friend.

Because I got my start on SU, most of my mentors aren’t “real” bloggers. Pseudonym is probably the person who’s taught me the most about blogging and building a website. Plus he puts up with all my “crazy” ideas.

Also, I’ve been following Flylady since she was posting to Yahoo! groups and offering individual help to anyone who really needed it. Watching her go from having a few followers (I think when I joined in 2000, it was around 50-75 people) to reaching almost 500,000 members now has been inspirational.

3. Can the answer be “Both boss.” To be honest a lot of why I write SU Com is because I saw a need. Friends were checking out SU and then leaving because they couldn’t figure it out. I remembered that I had started a blog about SU, and started posting to it again. I’d love to make money on the site too, and I’m actually working on an e-book on using StumbleUpon, since I’ve had a couple requests for one. Drawing on what I’ve learned from Flylady, I don’t want to advertise stuff on here just to make money, I want anything that I do sell on here to be things that I consider worth sharing with others. Do I want to make money on here? Yes. But both my name and reputation and you, my friends and readers, are more important to me than making money off of things that I wouldn’t buy or use for myself.

4. Only 3? Shoot!
1. I love the flow of information and ideas online. I LOVE learning new things and seriously can’t imagine living in a pre-internet time period.

2. I love meeting people. Ten years ago, I met my husband in an on-line chat room. He lived on the other side of the country (over 3000 miles) from me. Unfortunately, the internet was still in it’s beginning stages (MSN was mostly a collection of chat rooms), so our phone calls were expensive. In one month we spent over $1000 on phone bills. So I also love all the new communications technology. Plus, don’t ever try to convince me that on-line friends aren’t real friends…even most of my “real” friendships originally started online.

3. Anyone without children will probably laugh at this one, but I love getting to be an adult, without having to leave home. There used to be an advertisement on TV where a husband comes home from work and asks his wife a question, which she answers in baby talk. I couldn’t help laughing every time I saw the ad, because of the truth behind it. Being able to get online and talk to other adults is one of the biggest sanity savers I know of.

5. Three things I struggle with…let’s see: 1) has to be time. There’s never enough time to get everything done that you want, especially when a good part of that time includes writing and graphic art projects. Something has to give, and for me, unfortunately, it’s usually housework. You don’t happen to know of anyone who’d be willing to trade doing housework for a writing or web design project they’ve been putting off, do you?

2) Keeping focused. There are sooooo many interesting things online, that it’s easy to get sidetracked, especially when I’m trying to research an article.

3) Keeping up with e-mail and other messages. I’m really bad about this one. I tend to get focused on projects, and often it’s my correspondence that gets put to the side while I’m working. I have a friend who tells me she can tell when I’m in writer’s mode (and another friend who says I’m in Lala land) because even when I’m talking to them on the phone, I’m not really there.

Okay, now comes the fun part…picking 5 more people to answer this.

Ken Bramhall writes about sports, politics, and anything else that catches his interests on his StumbleUpon blog.

Allan Cockerill, a great writer, who knows more about Facebook than anyone else I know.

Mel from Ooh! Shiny! whose innocent question started me on my quest to learn about Internet Marketing.

Ange Recchia of Buzzing with Ange, a fun and thoughtful blog where she writes about abundance and inspiration.

Wayne Watts, who has been a friend since not long after I joined StumbleUpon and who also runs PilotSpeak, an internet community for pilots and anyone else connected with or interested in the aviation industry.

Okay guys, get writing. I’m looking forward to seeing your answers.

Technorati Tags: StumbleUpon, Blogs, Friends