A Very Web 2.0 Day

It all started with Google Analytics being down this morning. When what you do for a living revolves around Google, any time there's a 'glitch' the world just...stops spinning. Thankfully, whatever was going down behind-the-scenes at GA was fixed so the Earth is again rotating.

That being said, I had all intentions of working hard today – setting up goals for a new client, checking a new Adwords campaign's traffic, not leaving 'til 7pm*, etc. – until I was locked out of the entire GA dashboard. With no other billable client work to do, I waded into the Web 2.0 world.

With my sights originally set on blogging, I of course kept veering off-track and heading to Twitter – the ultimate resource in up-to-date info when something's amiss – and somehow remembered a video I needed to upload to YouTube for my mom. Had a few issues with the format and this and that, but finally was able to open it in Picasa to edit the length and upload it. From there, I of course had to write a blog post about said clip – a video demonstrating an exercise to get a horse to use its hind end correctly – and then tell Mom it was finally posted (we shot it last summer).

Still keeping a wary eye on my Twitter feed and the latest results on Google regarding the Analytics problem, I moseyed to Facebook to see if any of those friends were saying anything about it. Of course they weren't (different crowd) so I played around with my mom's blog some more – cleaning up labels and whatnot – and then my phone rang.

My sister doesn't usually call me at work – she prefers Google Talk – and when she said, "I have a really random question to ask," I settled in for a weird conversation. To my utter shock she says, "so, Twitter...how does it work?" I about had a heart attack (she's very anti-Twitter/Facebook/blogging and anything "social media") until she clarified, "don't worry, I'm not on it." Whew.

Turns out I was the phone support for her boss, who was trying to learn about tweeting. Pretty sure I inundated my sister's brain with some very odd-sounding jargon for a non-Web-2.0-savvy person. Still laughing to myself about the conversation, I zipped to my co-worker's office to relay the story and she floors me with her own news: she started her first blog.

What's the world coming to? Everyone's jumping on the social media bandwagon, which is great. I suppose I shouldn't think it's a big deal – even my AUNTS and mother-in-law are on Facebook!

Anyway, so my friend's blog is going to be about gardening – she gave it the cutest name, Gardening Plots – and it was evidently fathered...sorry, Ma Nature...MOTHERED by none other than our short-but-fun trip to Puerto Vallarta last month. Of course, spending almost a week in a tropical, sunny environment where the bougainvillea is blooming in the middle of winter would get any gardener hankering to get her hands soiled. In this case, it also spawned the birth of an online presence. Welcome to the blogosphere!

As I sit here finishing this up (and sipping whole-heartedly on my Bells 2-Hearted IPA) I can't help but think...what a very Web 2.0 day!



*Yes, I WAS at work until almost 7pm. Central time, that is.