tumblr and whrrl

Apparently the new social media are not allowed access to sufficient vowels when choosing their names. Not quite sure why old people like me should put up with this this should be. Anyhow, I saw a blog on Tumblr a couple of weeks ago and got the bright idea to start my own Tumblog. Or whatever they call it. The time-wasting black hole endeavor kind of engaged me for a few days, but basically the only thing that's on my Tumblog now is a bunch of my imported Twitter tweets. Which begs the question: Why not just use Twitter?

I thought the Tumblr blog looked cool, for sure. Very minimalist, very clean. Plus I liked the fact that I could upload photos from my mobile device, which I HAVEN'T QUITE FIGURED OUT HOW TO DO YET ON BLOGGER. Not that I'm bitter bitter, or anything.

Then I saw a photo story on Whrrl. Which also seemed very cool. Except after I created a Whrrl account, I could not FOR THE LIFE OF ME figure out how to create an actual photo story. It was one of those "just kill me now" scenarios. Kept clicking on the various hyperlinks on my "home" page, and kept NOT FINDING THE INFORMATION I WANTED. And their "help" page was no help at all. You can't even delete your account all by yourself - you have to WRITE THEM AN E-MAIL and ask if they'll be so good as to delete your account for you. Whatever.

Hence I am blogging a lot more on Blogger again. Which is as it should be. Except for the f*cking nagging mobile uploads issue.

My Tumblr feed
My Twitter feed

A few hours after I posted the above rant, a lovely (I'm extrapolating here) woman named Heather Meeker - the Director of Corporate and Marketing Communications at Pelago (the makes of Whrrl) - sent me a very helpful e-mail:

Hi Michelle,

I just read your blog post about frustrations with Tumblr and our service, Whrrl. I found you via your tweet (@emelgy Aimless kvetching about Tumblr and Whrrl: http://tinyurl.com/dd3gw6) and hope you don’t mind me reaching out to you.

I wanted to apologize that your experience with Whrrl has been less than fantastic. You are right - at this time, you are not able to start a story from the Whrrl.com website. However, you can start a story through our iPhone application or via any phone with SMS text capabilities. If you’re interested to learn how, I’d be happy to walk you through it.

Here’s the good news - we are working to enable anyone to start a story from the Web. That feature is coming soon, and we’ll be sure to tweet and blog about it, once it’s completed.

Please let me know if you have any questions. Again, sorry to hear your about your experience with Whrrl.

Best,

Heather

OMG! I don't know why I am continually surprised to discover that people actually READ my blog posts. In this case, I felt compelled to send Ms. Meeker an even lovelier response:

Heather,

Thanks for your e-mail. Good to know that there are real people out there to take care of your Whrrlers. Too bad the same can't be said about Twitter - I have submitted help tickets to them several times, and have never once heard back from a real person. Whrrl wins the service game this time around.

I appreciate your offer to help me learn to use Whrrl from my mobile device, but (being that I am living in Canada, with a dubious mobile service provider) I suspect that the whole mobile uploading thing would be a bit of a challenge for me, and possibly beyond Whrrl's technical support skills. Once you begin to offer the web service thingy, I may revisit the whole Whrrl thingy.

Until then, cheers and good luck with your other customers. I'll be posting your offer of aid as an addendum to my blog post, so that people will know what nice guys you are over there at Whrrl. Er, Pelago.

Best,

MLG

So there you have it. My work here is done.

twitter

So, I've jumped on the bandwagon. Not that I had any real purpose in mind when I did so - mostly I was just curious about what happened on Twitter, and wanted to check it out for myself.

I have contacts who are really into the social media marketing scene, and they'd been recommending Twitter for a year or two. I've got a bit of time on my hands right now, and was looking for some online entertainment... so...

What I'm finding is that Twitter is like one of those crazy midway rides that spin you around in every direction after you've foolishly eaten way too much cotton candy and elephant ears. Not that I'm knocking that feeling. Just sharing some words of wisdom, for what they're worth. (Note to Mom: You don't want to join Twitter.)

On a deeper level, I'm really enjoying it. Once you get past all the scammers trying to peddle their get-rich-quick schemes, there are some fascinating things to be found in 140-characters-or-less sound bites. A Twitter contact of mine recently posted the question: What do you want people to know about you? What kind of people would you most like to meet on Twitter?

My responses:

"I would like others to know that I'm pretending to be here for the networking while secretly enjoying the random tweets the most."

"I would most like to meet people who can make me laugh milk out my nose, or make my eyes widen in amazement."

There are certainly plenty of people who can do the latter. Like my friend Teresa Tarasewicz, owner of City Lights Bookshop in London, ON (aka @CityLightsLondn):

"Glorious burst of sunshine just made things better... no, don't go... wait... stay a bit longer, I have beer. (reaching hand towards fading beams)"

Or @TheBloggess, who writes:

"The Ultimate Argument For Legalizing Weed - Undeniable benefits that...OH MY GOD MY HANDS ARE HUGE! http://tinyurl.com/dfgo95 (via @cracked)"

"Also, I just want to point out that I have more followers than @cracked. It's awesome. And by "awesome" I mean "kind of a travesty"."

Ultimately what I'm enjoying about Twitter is the enforced restriction of having to communicate in 140-character chunks. It's not as easy at you might think. But it engages my mind in ways that I can't quite explain. Some recent tweets:

"My downstairs neighbours must hate me - I'm always dropping heavy stuff on my bedroom floor at midnight-ish." sent 11:30PM, Friday, March 13 2009

"Really??? The person in an apartment below me who showers ev wkday @ 515 showers @ 445 on Sat? That's some cruel sched." sent 4:46AM, Saturday, March 14 2009

"Wht's rlly cruel is waking up ur insomniac-tendencied nghbor @ 445 whn she went 2 bed @ midnght-ish. Aftr dropping smthg." sent 5:15AM, Saturday, March 14 2009

As you can see from the last tweet, running out of characters can lead to some desperate txt abbrevs. I have a friend who posts 100-word blog entries - as in, EXACTLY 100 words - no more, no less. I'm toying with the idea of 140-character blog posts, myself. Wait, isn't that what Twitter...? Nevermind.

Footnote: Follow me on Twitter @emelgy

Photo credit: ©2009 Michelle Lynne Goodfellow ~ Taken at some ungodly hour of the morning after I couldn't sleep because my neighbour was taking a shower at 4:45AM.