Leave The # For Twitter!

 (Image from http://www.digitaltrends.com)

Why is Facebook copying Twitter and Instagram’s hashtag feature? I’m not a fan! Not long ago I would see people using the # symbol on Facebook even though it didn’t actually do anything – even then I thought “excuse me, you’ve got the wrong website – think you’re supposed to be on Twitter!”

Facebook needs to stop trying to copy other websites. We have different social media sites because we use them for different things. Facebook; I communicate with friends and family, LinkedIn; I communicate with people in the professional world, and Twitter; I can communicate with absolutely anyone, and celebrities! If I use Facebook, like many others, to communicate with people I know then why would I be bothered what random people are hashtagging?

If something is popular, others seem to jump on the bandwagon rather than creating something new their-selves…why? I certainly will not be using that feature on Facebook. They don’t get a thumbs up from me for copying, there’s no creativity or thought gone into this and I think it’s absolutely useless for what people use it for.

What do you think? Do you like the new #Facebook?

You Never Know Who’s Watching!

(Image from www.etftrends.com)

It’s true, you don’t! As most of us tweet, blog, and write stuff on Facebook without being aware of who is reading what we’re saying, we have to be careful because someone important may actually be watching you!

During the start of University I tweeted completely unaware people were even bothered about what I was saying, I just tweeted for me, forgetting that there was a whole world out there to read what I was writing – BAD MOVE! During a University project, where we used social media to make a video go viral (which we succeeded in doing), I had a direct message from a Lecturer at Uni telling to be careful what I was writing on Twitter as we ‘had a lot of eyes on us’. He was right! We ended up having 2 different interviews from that because they were following what we were doing and saying whilst we were all completely unaware of it!

Since then I have been careful about what I write on the internet – it’s a big thing you know and a lot of people can see you! I even had a e-mail yesterday from podium.me asking for an interview with me about my recent blog post about the “Rate My Shag” pages on Facebook. Just when I thought my blog wasn’t popular!

It’s an amazing thing the internet, be careful what you do with it!

“Start being a professional today”

Some of you may already be aware of this website, but for me it’s a new revelation. SimpleWash (once known as FaceWash).

It’s a website which has an app on Facebook and Twitter, which allows you to log into both social media profiles and you can search a word to see if you have previously tweeted it or wrote it on Facebook. The whole idea of it is to type in any swear words, search if you’ve used them, then it gives you the chance to delete them before anyone else can find them!

When people are young and unaware of what these profanities or explicit comments could do for their potential future, SimpleWash gives people the opportunity to delete all these mistakes and have a clean start before entering the professional world.

You don’t have to only look for swearing, you can look for any negative words or comments and delete them, for those days when you thought it was a good idea to rant online.

SimpleWash helps you to not only delete earlier mistakes but also make you think twice in future about what you’re really writing online and whether that would offend a potential employer. Seeing some of my old tweets/statuses shocked me, and I have certainly learnt what to and not too tweet or talk about online.

Great app. Very clever. Very useful.

For those of you that want to try it out: http://simplewa.sh/login