Mom 3.0

Yesterday I met with someone I’ve hired to help me with web marketing. Obviously she knows more about this stuff than I do, that’s why I hired her, but I’m still amazed at all the terms and phrases she tossed off effortlessly that had me scratching my head. Apparently, we’ll start with SEO (Search Engine Optimization), then develop a template for an e-zine that will interface with my database as a way to strategically enhance my network; and eventually we’ll look at web-based affiliate marketing and potential links with e-commerce-indexed social networking sites, as well as the pros and cons of DKI (Dynamic Keyword Insertion) in PPC (pay-per-click). And we haven't even started exploring algorithmic search results, link farms (places that sell pork products?), and keyword stuffing (made from bread crumbs and sausage from the link farm, I imagine)
If you’re absolutely lost here, I’m so relieved! I don’t mind feeling like a technical luddite around teenage texting, because I understand the concept and I can do it, I just don’t feel like developing that much dexterity in my thumbs. But reading about the internet is already confusing enough. I like to view the web the same way I view flying in planes; my dad, a former Air Force Navigator, drew me diagrams of air currents and vectors, but in my gut I simply don’t believe a large metal object weighng several thousand tons, full of people and bad food, can leave the ground, so I just pretend I understand how it flies. I have no idea how the internet works, I just pretend I do so I can enjoy emailing, blogging, and googling (as well as all these new verbs!)
Now, apparently, we’re moving to Web 3.0. I think I get that Web 1.0 was just stuff on the internet, and Web 2.0 is more interactive, where you can respond to things, so how much more interactive is 3.0? I remember when I bought my first Mac computer, back when it had no hard drive and 512 K of memory – ah, the good old days! – and the big advantage of Macs was that they were ‘user friendly’. So if Web 3.0 is a dramatic improvement on user friendliness, what, is it going to ask us out? Make dinner? Get my kids to stop fighting?
Come to think of it, I can think of a bunch of great stuff Web 3.0 ought to do – but in the meantime, I have to study my terminology and learn the difference between DKI and DKNY. When my marketing guru mentioned Pay Per Clicks, I thought she was talking about paper clips – I guess I have a long way to go!

OMG: We srvivd b4 txtng, FYI!

Has texting gone a bit haywire? Teens don’t talk on the phone, they don’t even email, they just send cryptic abbreviations that have english teachers worrying about the future of accurate spelling. I feel like the old curmudgeon, complaining that kids today don’t know how to parse a sentence or churn their own butter, and reminiscing about the good old days of fountain pens that leaked and cars without power steering.

I’m all for keeping up with technology – I love email for transacting business or keeping up with friends whose schedules don’t jive with mine, and an iPod is much more convenient than those old bulky walk-mans (not to mention 8-track tapes). However, this texting craze seems to have gotten out of hand – it’s one thing to send a quick text to someone in a meeting, so you don’t interrupt anything (Pls PU kds @ 3, thnx), but I had to institute a no-texting rule in my carpools, because apparently teenagers can’t wait 15 minutes to reply to an urgent message about who said what to whom about you know what, RUOK?, and the incessant clicking sound from 3 competing phones was driving me crazy.

I’m actually lucky – I have boys, who aren’t nearly as committed to texting as most girls. And my younger son is the only 11-year-old on the planet who doesn’t have a cell phone (am I also a neanderthal in that area? I think he can wait til he’s 13, since it's the big incentive for him to go through his bar mitzvah, and besides, this way he has something else to complain about, on top of our house having no 2nd t.v., no wii, game cube, etc., and the only mother in the world who makes her kid read occasionally).

I can decipher the lingo, BTW, I jst dnt thnk its gr8 2 tlk w/o vowels or punctuation. So I'll allow some texting, but minimal, and let the kids have even more to complain about. Oh well, I thought my parents were behind the times because their idea of a wild night out was their contract bridge club and I introduced them to recycling. I can’t wait to see what my future grandchildren think of my boys!