Spam, spam, spam, spam . . .

Every time I turn on my computer, I hear that Monty Python song about tinned meat, and it’s not just the piles of unsolicited ads (“Lower your mortgage”, “You deserve sexual pleasure!”, “Money for you, Please to send account numbering to Nigeria bank”). I’ve also got accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, and multiple blogging sites, and if I were to keep up with every message I get on every one of them, I wouldn’t have time to work, write my own blog, or deal with the kids who inspire the blog, much less eat or sleep.
So I was astounded to read an article in today’s paper about texting, which included the statistic that average teens send 2,000 texts a month and a case study of one 14-year-old girl whose parents cut her off when she hit 15,000 a month, and confiscated her phone until she promised to keep it under 5,000. (That's not a typo.) Even assuming that the girl’s texting skills are infinitely superior to mine (given that I take 20 minutes to send a single text, so I don't get much practice), those numbers are still both disgusting and impressive – disgusting because to rack up 500 messages a day, she had to be texting in class, at meals, and in her sleep; and impressive because she stayed so incredibly caught up with her messages.
I have no plans to start texting on a regular basis, TYVM, and I’m learning to delete the emails with cute cartoons of kittens, or touting ‘Free Shipping’ from stores I don’t patronize. And frankly, I don’t need to respond every time someone on Facebook lets me know she took the ‘What Musical Theater Leading Lady Are You?’ quiz. But I do want to get better at catching up with business emails, networking sites, and connecting with the old friends I’ve rediscovered on Facebook - you know, the point of all this internet access, right?
I imagine the 5,000-a-month whiz doesn’t fret over her piled-up inbox, she just responds quickly and concisely to the messages she feels are important enough, so that’s the one part of her story I do want to emulate. (The other good part of her story is that I was starting to get angry at my 15-year-old for exceeding his prepaid text limit of 200 – he looks really good by comparison, and now he’s won his argument that he really is saner about it than most teens.)
And I will no longer feel guilty deleting chain emails ( “Add your name to the panty-of-the-month club” – which I didn’t make up, even though it sounds like something out of a Monty Python skit . . . )

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!