My 10 Social Years

It all started with an invite to connect on MySpace sometime in the latter half of 2004. I was a class 12 student and fairly aware of the internet. I distinctly remember my first hotmail account, Yahoo! messenger, chatrooms, “asl?” and those ‘Cyber Cafes’ much before MySpace came around.

But MySpace was different, it was Online Social Networking… something I didn’t really understand in the beginning (frankly speaking, I think MySpace is still not as user friendly as it should be). So without much activity on MySpace and a belief that Yahoo! messenger is the best thing on the internet (as far as connecting with people goes), I came across something which was a revolution of sorts… it was called… *drums roll* ORKUT! 😀

I don’t have much to say about Orkut but thank God a couple of years later I joined the lifesaver – Facebook. Facebook was much, much cooler, easier and urbane. It brought a plethora of social networking websites with it. Facebook also gave me the courage to delete the Orkut profile and get done with it once and for all 😊

2014 is the year when I complete my 10 social years and it calls for a tiny little celebration. Well I could have just posted a status, hoped for some likes and comments and that could have been it but then I thought of doing something bigger… something like a hashtag activity – #My10SocialYears

Why all this? What will you get out of this? Good questions. A humble answer is that this is one of my hobbies. If your hobby is collecting stamps or coins, shouldn’t your aim be to put together an exhibition one day? Remember what Steve Jobs said about following your heart and continue doing what you like to do and then the dots would connect one day? If I look back at social networking, the dots have definitely connected for me both personally and professionally.

And apart from the Steve Jobs ‘gyaan‘, below are few more reasons that made me take #My10SocialYears seriously,

• More visibility
• Taking a hobby to the next level 
• Possible future business propositions 
• Something that I would love to include in my resume 
• Fun!

So do not miss to follow the #My10SocialYears hashtag from March 1 to March 31 on facebook and twitter. Below are the links to connect with me,

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/shoaibqureshi.in
Twitter – https://twitter.com/soyatweets
LinkedIn – http://www.linkedin.com/in/shoaibqureshi
Web – https://www.shoaibqureshi.in/my-10-social-years/

Update

Here’s the link to all the tweets that were made using #My10SocialYears