The Vlogborthers were my introduction to YouTube.

Wait: lemme back up and give Beyoncé her well-earned props for creating my dependence on YouTube. Hey – when you have no television (so, clearly no cable) you do what you gotta do to stay entertained.

Back to The Vlogbrothers.  They started a revolution on The Internet 3 years ago, when they took communication to the tiny screen and invited The Universe to watch. In my non-television, non-workday summer of 2009, I watched the evolution of internet communication. I learned not only that people like to belong to a community (Nerfighters.ning.com), but another lesson:

You don’t have to be LAZY about Internet 2.0, or Communication 2.0, or Social Media, or Online Engagement, or whatever you want to call it. You don’t have to exchange quality for immediacy.

Enter this video:

.

RIGHT!?

…it is like the lost HOW-TO that is left out of ALL introductions to all social media, sharing, online community-building tools. Just because you shrunk your interface doesn’t mean that you have to trade in 12 years of education, another 4 years of specialized education, and however many years of professional experience for 140 characters.

Additionally, it should not be communicated to the generations that look at our example that grammar, spelling, punctuation, and cumulatively, meaning should to fade from online dialog.

I LOVE reading what everyone has to say: but I also like understanding it, without pondering which interpretation I was supposed to take from a run-on sentence with none of the indicators we as literate human beings reasonably depend on.

Don’t you?

posted by thejillian
Tags: Jillian
Filed under: The Jillian

Yes. I did. I’ve spent so much time reading and soaking in The Internet that I have not reserved any favorites lately.

It’s been fun.

I will definitely rectify this situation.

In a fun way. Like isn’t this a kickass picture?

posted by thejillian
Tags: Crescent Fresh
Filed under: The Jillian

I won’t be giving you salacious headlines, or anything. I’m just not focused on that just yet.

In my first serious post, I visit a female blogger and vlogger whose post today made me think. Here it is, first – you watch it and then I’ll talk:

My first reaction when I read the title was, “This is SO CORRECT.” – and naturally I clicked. As it was the first video of hers I’ve watched, I found her accent really neat. As she talked about the reasons why a person shouldn’t feel pressured to Twitter, I felt a disconnect.

The video isn’t very long at all — which I like. It was to-the-point and didn’t have a hint of “old spice” so I craned my neck to see it from her perspective. Twitter is a place to connect with like-minded tweeters. If you join Twitter without a destination or goal in mind, you will be lost. If you remain lost on Twitter and receive no validation through followers, you soon quit and view your Twitter time as useless to you.

Simple enough, and true enough. But not the whole picture.

And that’s where I realized that this disconnect I was feeling on the reason one should not join Twitter is larger. It has to do with The Internet. Yes, capitalized. Many feel that The Internet is a place you go to visit YOUR friends. But those who “get it” know that The Internet is a place you go to VISIT your friends. You see? A good question to ask a person thinking about joining Twitter is: “Are you INTO the internet?” Because when you are into the internet, you go there for fun. You really explore. You treat the internet like a community, rather than a strip mall.

If you’re not into the internet, you make friends and then socialize with them online. You go to the chatroom and forum together, you shop around in the boutique social networks together, you point and snicker at the wild personalities, and you leave together when the place gets lame. Your friends lean on each other, looking around the clique, taking cues from one another.

If you ARE into The Internet, then you go online to make friends. You see it a whole different way.  You walk into a forum, a community, a twitter hashtag and shake hands with a stranger. Suddenly it’s 3 years later and you JUST NOW met that close confidante in person. That is the power of The Internet — of Twitter — if you want it to be. But you have to be INTO the internet. You have to be OPEN to socializing wit people you don’t know over one common interest. Random? Political? Non-Profit? Product? News? Hair? Innovation? [subject]2.0? Performance? Literature? Artist? Engineer? It could be any one of these or any other interest. If there is a common bond, does it really matter that you’ve never shaken hands??

So, no you don’t need to join Twitter, but you also don’t need to already have a network in place to feel comfortable there, either.
Make sense? Maybe I should use some colors.

posted by thejillian
Tags: Razor
Filed under: The Jillian

The focus of this blog will be to highlight other blogs and posts. As The Jillian Says: This is not the greatest blog in the world….this is a tribute.

Remember that song from Tenacious D? Yeah. I totally, and un-original-ly, yanked the concept. ← And made up a word. And that’s how I roll. I have FUN with the internet and [insert maniacal boy-genius-turned-mad-scientist voice here] this will be my playground! …………*ahem*………. So the site is still under construction, but keep visiting and you will find some cool developments.

Or at least some interesting links.

posted by thejillian
Tags: Razor
Filed under: The Jillian

There is but one post so far.

You are welcome.

posted by thejillian
Tags: Crescent Fresh, Old Spice
Filed under: The Jillian