I’m virtually on the cutting edge of networking

THE ART OF SOCIAL NETWORKING:

Just because I look at home philosophising while standing on a rock wrapped in a bed sheet, doesn’t mean I’m not at the forefront when it comes to living in the modern world.

I’m on Facebook and Twitter and I’m thinking about getting one of those mobile phones things that you can walk around with. As a result I’ve got more than a thousand people who are virtually my ‘friends’ and though I haven’t met most of them, I’m often aware of the moment when they head off to bed.

When social networking, you can find kindred spirits who also have beans for their tea and you can build communities around a common interest. Believe it or not, the ‘Learn with Kev’ group has got a fair old following on Facebook. Every few weeks I send members a step-by-step guide to an essential life skill.

People often tell me they’re really excited when they log on and think they’ve got a message from a friend. But when it turns out it’s actually just a little light-hearted analysis of an activity — which they don’t do — from me, they’re disappointed, to say the least. I sense I’m being blamed for the fact that no one else ever messages them.

These will be the same people who were a bit picky about the friend requests they accepted in the early days but soon started accepting everyone when requests from people they actually knew or could remember dried up.

If you’re really cool, though, you should get on Twitter. OMG! It’s hard not to feel young and smug when you speak to someone who’s not on there. “What do you write?” they say. “Nothing, really,” I reply. “I reckon you’d love it, grandad.”

On Twitter, you’re supposed to post messages of no more than 140 characters and what you’re aiming for is to have more people following you than you follow, which takes some doing, unless you start deleting people you follow once you’ve got them to follow you back.

The goal is to be following about 36 people, Stephen Fry among them, and have more than three thousand hanging on to your every word. That’s my plan, anyway. If you go to “learnwithkev” on Twitter you’ll see that my subject-to-stalker ratio needs a little work.

Social networking has undoubtedly changed our lives for ever. To enjoy a real-time connection with random people around the world who you’ll never know nor meet is surely an astonishing leap forward for human kind.

I, for one, think it beats having friends in your real life. Follow me and I’ll follow you. I promise . . .


NEXT WEEK: the art of choosing a name