By Jan Jackson
To borrow a phrase from the upcoming Northwest Travel Writer’s Conference, it is a Blackberry, Blog, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, iPhone world.
If you still cling to fond memories of the old party-line telephone, you may not be ready for it. If you have already discovered any of these ways to communicate with friends, family and business associates, you are already on board. If you are not quite sure what the terms mean, read on.
BLACKBERRY is a smart hand-held cell phone primarily known for its ability to send and receive email wherever it can access a wireless network. Today’s BlackBerry supports push e-mail, mobile telephone, text messaging, Internet, faxing, Web browsing and other wireless information services as well.
BLOG is a Web site on which an individual or group of users produces an ongoing narrative. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject while other function as more personal online diaries. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format has made blogs very popular. (The word itself is a contraction of the term weblog.)
FACEBOOK is a free-access privately owned social networking Web site that connects users and organizes them by city, workplace, school and region to connect and interact with other people. Once the user joins Facebook, he adds friends, sends them messages and updates personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. (The term Facebook refers to the paper facebooks depicting members of a campus community that some U.S. colleges and prep schools give to incoming students, faculty and staff as a way to get to know other people on campus.)
iPHONE is an internet-connected multimedia smart phone designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The iPhone also functions as a camera phone, a portable media player, and an Internet client with email, Web browsing and local Wi-Fi connectivity. (Time magazine named it the Invention of the Year in 2007)
LINKEDIN is a social networking site similar to Facebook that is mainly used for professional networking. The purpose of the site is to allow registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people they know and trust in business. It can then be used to find jobs, people and business opportunities recommended by someone in one’s contact network.
TEXT MESSAGING is the common term for sending short messages from mobile phones and the individual messages that are sent are called text messages. The message is typed with the sender’s thumbs on the phone’s keypad. The most common application of the service is person-to-person messaging but text messages are also often used to interact with automated systems such as ordering products and services for mobile phones or participating in contests.
TWITTER is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that lets its users send and read other users’ posts, called tweets. Tweets, which may be up to 140 characters in length, are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed (free) to them (known as followers). Tweets are searchable by person or topic (which means if you want to know what Brad Pitt is doing nearly every minute of the day you can be one of the 14,261 people following him or maybe one of the 98,389 people who are following Paris Hilton). If you are clever (your tweets can’t be too brashly sales directed), you can create tweets that make people want to go to your Web site to find out more about your business). Twitter is the third most used social network (Facebook being the largest followed by a similar social network called MySpace.)
So there you have it. The days when you knew for sure that twittering referred to bird calls and blackberries meant soft edible fruit are gone. Welcome to a wonderful Blackberry, Blog Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, iPhone world.
