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The idea of lurking sounds quite nice to me. Visiting your favourite sites, reading the latest stories or editorials, and only thinking to yourself your thoughts about it all. Unfortunately for me I always seem to have something to say, and that something just always seems necessary to share. Of course, I don’t participate in every single blog post that I read, or respond to every Twitter message that runs through my feed, but a good number of the concepts touched upon or my responses to the discussions, I share. I find that my most common sharing technique is through real-life discussion, either with my coworkers, my fellow students, or my friends. It is often the result of these discussions that sparks a good blog post, or sends me on a mad search of the internet to answer some of the questions we have discussed.
On social networking sites such as Facebook, I find myself lurking through people’s wall posts to see what is going on in their lives, but I am definitely one to post a comment when something is out of the ordinary, has made me laugh, or is a discussion I just must participate in.
With Twitter I find myself further disseminating links to others from what I have found through those I follow (always giving credit where it is due of course). Personally, my attitude is that if I found something interesting it is quite likely others will as well. I just can’t seem to fight the urge to read information and not pass it along to others.
Maybe it is because I have never been shy. I have never been one of those people to have a dying question and choose not ask it in fear of being judged. If I have a question, chances are I am going to ask it. I find the challenging thing for myself is sitting back and listening. Other people always have valuable things to contribute, and as much as I always want to get my two cents in, sometimes sitting back and lurking is just as valuable as racing to get your opinion or information heard.
3 Responses for "If only I had nothing to say…"
I’m glad that you share your joy of exploration and participation.
It’s a wonderful thing Roen
Dean (who rarely lurks)
This blog entry was really thought provoking for me Roen. I find that my in person personality and my online personality is really different. Online I am definitely a lurker, but in real life I would say that I am someone who usually offers up my two cents. When I read this post I starting thinking about how strange it is that my likelihood of sharing information is so different depending on if I am online or not.
I was thinking recently that I should stop lurking on people’s Facebook pages so much without leaving messages for them. If I am not willing to leave messages for them at least some of the time why am I “friends” with them? I do learn a lot from doing it, but maybe my lurking has gone too far!
Thanks for making me think about my own habits and how I interact with SNS’s and web 2.0 tools.
The title of this entry made me laugh, Roen.
My best friend recently started graduate school (in education), and the last time we spoke, she lamented the fact that she does so much reading on so many interesting topics and always has so much to say about it all. There simply isn’t time or space to say everything. It’s a parallel problem, eh?
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