BYE BYE TWITTER!

Well, I did it. I finally deactivated my Twitter account. I’m sure it’s a great social media tool for many, many people, but I just didn’t get it. For some reason, unknown to me, there were 1500 people out there following me, and more every day. Why? No, really… why?

I have nothing important to say. And even if I did, I certainly can’t say it in 140 characters or less! But let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that I had something very profound to tweet. What if none of my 1500 followers happened to be on Twitter at that precise moment? They would totally miss it and my profoundness would be lost forever! What a waste!

Nope, Twitter is not for me. The funny thing is, I haven’t tweeted anything in a really long time, but I keep getting new followers anyway. How does that happen? It must be my glowing reputation I suppose!

So I bit the bullet and hit the “deactivate my account” button. Of course, it’s not that easy. They want to know why you want to quit and they want to warn you that if you say “yes, I really, truly do want to quit” (my words, not theirs) you can’t change your mind later, but eventually, they let you fly away. (Get it? Twitter…bird…fly away. Haha!) And now, I feel strangely…FREE!!!

Karen

WEIGHT LOSS UPDATE

It occurred to me that I haven’t given you an update on my weight loss lately. I thought about this for 2 reasons. One is that I hit another major goal, but I’ll tell you about that in a minute. The other reason is that in my Weight Watchers meeting last week, the leader asked us about “going public” with our weight loss journeys. She was talking about whether we share with friends, etc, but here was me, chiming up saying “Oh yeah, I tweet and facebook about it. Heck, I even blog about my weight loss!” When everyone stared at me like I had grown horns, I explained that the more people who know, the more accountable I am to them, and the less likely I am to gain the weight back. I just don’t want to be embarrassed basically!

So here’s my latest weight loss update:

I’ve hit 40 pounds!!!

Just for fun, I thought I’d post all my different head shots that I’ve used over the past year or so for my profile pics. (I really show my weight loss in my face!) So here goes:

LOOK, I went from 3 chins to only 1!!!!

So that’s my self-pat-on-the-back for the day! Anyone else who needs a pat on the back, just post it here and you’ll get one from me!

Karen

SO WHAT ARE YOU REALLY THANKFUL FOR?

I know this time of year we’re supposed to reflect upon all the things that we are thankful for, like our health, our families, etc, etc, etc. Not that I’m not thankful for these things, but I want to dig a little deeper and confess what I’m REALLY thankful for.

Here goes:

1. Saturday Morning Cartoons. I know, you’re thinking that those have been around forever. Well, not in my world, they haven’t. We weren’t allowed to watch cartoons in the mornings like everybody else in the world. Really! So to me, snuggling with my kids in bed on a Saturday morning, watching cartoons, is a real treat!
   
2. On-Line Banking. I admit it – I’m REALLY bad at paying bills. So the fact that I can wait until the very last minute and send it off via the internet and know that it will get there on time is a HUGE relief!
   
3. Drive Thru Pharmacies. I’ll admit this one, too – I’m really lazy! If I can accomplish an errand without actually leaving my car, I’m all for it.
   
4. Social Media. WOW, what a great place to meet new friends, find old friends, and market my book. I am amazed at how many really good friends I have on sites like Twitter whom I have never met, and probably never will, but we’d probably do almost anything for each other. And I’m thrilled at finding some friends from years and years ago on Facebook. They were never forgotten, but I certainly never thought they’d be in my life again. So, so glad they are (you know who you are, especially my Central School buds!).
   
5. Washable Markers and Paints. Need I say more?
   
6. Roomba (Robotic Vacuum). I HATE to vacuum, but now I can do it every day without lifting a finger. How awesome is that? DH programmed it, and it runs every morning at 9:00 am. Every so often it escapes where it’s supposed to be and picks up something it shouldn’t, but to occasionally look for it under a couch is a small price to pay!
   
7. Digital Cameras. Kids (and husbands) can take as many pictures as they want!
   
8. Mindless Books. When I read, I don’t want to learn anything. I just want to be taken away into a mystery or a steamy romance or a comedy. (Yes, I’m a book slut!) The most I want to think about is Whodunit or Whosgonnadoit? And there are PLENTY of books that fit the bill on this one!
   
9. Craig’s List. As long as you can avoid the scammers, it’s a great place to buy and sell. Especially those non-returnable impulse buys!
   
10. But, of course, all kidding aside, I’m thankful for my awesome family (yes, that includes my sisters and my girlfriends who are like sisters to me!), our good fortune and our good health. I never, ever lose sight of how truly lucky we are.
    

Karen

HACK, HACK, HACK…OY!

What in the heck is this world coming to? With every new product or service, come new criminals. And they are SMART! I’m on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, not to mention Ebay, Paypal and a few others. So far, my accounts on Facebook and Twitter have been hacked into, as well as my husband’s Ebay accounts. And not only do we have to deal with the actual hacking, but then we have to encounter CUSTOMER SERVICE (play Jaws theme music here).

So I’ll tell you a bit about the scams. On Twitter, it wasn’t so bad. Well, except for the personal violation of it all. But all the hacker did was pretend to be me and advertise some stupid “Get More Followers” system. Whatever. I deleted the tweets and changed my password.

But Facebook was WAY more personal. The hacker, posing as me, went online, found a friend who was also online and started IM-ing him. He tried to convince my friend that I was stranded in London and needed him to wire me $900 immediately. Luckily, my friend isn’t a total idiot, and called me first. But apparently this scam is so popular, Facebook has it’s own name for it – The 419 Scam. Here’s an article from MSNBC’s website on it. It also goes into how difficult it is to talk to Facebook’s Customer Service. Woops, did I say TALK? Forgive me for that blunder. Facebook has NO telephone support, only email support.

Okay, the business side of me says, “Well, it IS a free service after all.” But the personal side of me wants to know why, when they even have special names for scams, do they not have telephone support at least for these?

So let’s move on to Ebay. This has happened to my husband TWICE in a month. Somebody hacks into his account, sells a bunch of stuff under his user name, collects the money and never sends any product. So my DH gets bad feedback (and if you know anything about Ebay, you know that feedback is UBER important) and the threat of Ebay shutting down his account. BUT AT LEAST THEY HAVE TELEPHONE SUPPORT! (Okay, it’s in another country, but that’s a whole other blog post.)

Okay, I’ve ranted and raved enough about this. Thanks for indulging me. I do have a point to this though, and here it is:

To Hackers: You are so smart. Why not use your intelligence for good? You could be so successful in this technical world. I bet any of these sites would LOVE to hire you to protect themselves against people like you. I’m just saying…

Karen

Mission Accomplished

Well, I did it! I am now on Facebook, making my goal complete. Of course, I still need to figure out what I'm doing on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, but at least I'm there! Actually, I've "met" a bunch of people on Twitter already. It's amazing how total strangers, who have absolutely NO IDEA who you are, will start "following" you. If you think about it, that's a lot of pressure. These folks must think that I'll have something wise to say, something to help them on their journeys, or even something witty. So I get stressed out every time I "tweet." If I just want to say that I'm working on my blog... well, that's kind-of boring. How can I spice it up in 140 characters or less? What if my followers STOP following me? What if I'm not popular? OMG, IT'S HIGH SCHOOL ALL OVER AGAIN!!!

(Deep breaths, deep breaths.)

Okay, I'm fine now.

Okay, so now that I'm "connected" at all these sites, now I have to manage my time and make sure I don't spend too much time Tweeting or posting or whatever it's called. Believe it or not, that's hard to do. It's very addicting! And fun!

Karen

Social Media for Dummies

By now, everybody has heard the term "social media," right? And do we all know what it means? NO!!! Sure, you've been on Facebook or My Space, or your kids have, but for all of us Mom Entrepreneurs out there, we're supposed to use social media to help us sell our products. HUH?

So, being the sales side of my partnership with Melissa, I decided to start looking into this phenomenon. My first step was to sign up for LinkedIn. Hey, I'm already ahead because somebody had sent me an invitation to sign up months ago, so I did. And that's all I did, but at least I got started! So...now what? LinkedIn told me to download my Outlook contacts so I can see who I want to invite to be in my "network." Hmmm, are they going to spam my friends? I decided to risk it, and actually found out that several people I know are already on LinkedIn. They have way more people in their networks, so I sent invitations to everyone who was already playing in this game. I figured if I have more folks in my network, I'll look popular and everyone will want to join. Right???? Okay, maybe not, but what I did figure out was that I needed to join "groups" to start getting my name out there, and to learn a thing or two about...well, about whatever these groups are about.

So I joined a bunch of groups that my friends and/or colleagues are in. WOW, I've gotten more emails in the past 24 hours than I think I got all month! Perhaps I joined too many groups! But at least I've gotten started, which is the important thing. I guess I just need to fine-tune everything. Oh, and by the way, you can see my profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/karenbberg.

My next project: Twitter! Wish me luck!

Karen