Why Blog? Why Facebook?

Recently, someone asked me "Why do you blog and facebook?" Well, there is a very detailed answer, so here it is!

Blogging:

1. To share our news with family/friends who live out of state.

2. To document our milestones.

3. To help other mommies with my tips/experience.

4. To reach out for help from other mommies and/or prayer partners.

5. To give God credit for the victories in our lives.

6. To share The Good News with others.

7. It is fun! It tickles my creative bones.

8. It makes good use of all the (thousands of) digital photos we take.

9. Dover LOVES reading our blogs.

10. To share my favorite books/links/moments with others.

11. Reading other's family blogs provides all the reasons above/except I get to be the reader.

12. Because reality is..we don't have time to personally communicate with everyone we'd like to.

The secret to blogging is in being a 'smart blogger'. You don't give out personal details regarding your home, schedule, contact information. You don't post any pictures that one might consider seductive. You should be careful to make sure your content is always clean and appropriate. You take your information off of the search engines, so that your viewers are controlled to be those whom you've given the web address. And lastly, you take any possible measures to monitor who might be checking in on your blog.

Facebooking:

1. Without being in the workplace, this is my new social atmosphere during the day.

2. I can share recent photos/news/findings/questions with my 'friends'.

3. I can easily keep in touch with many out of state friends without schedule conflicts.

4. I can share The Good News.

5. I can shop flair.

6. I can reach out to others for tips/recommendations.

7. I can share photos with my family/friends.

8. Because reality is..we don't always have time to communicate with everyone we'd like to.

9. Because it is fun!

The secret to facebooking is in who your 'friends' are. I am not a facebooker that wants 500 friends. I keep my friend list narrowed down to who I actually want to communicate with, and those who keep their profiles clean. Also, I am careful to make sure my photos are appropriate and don't give out any information that is too personal. My facebook friends consist only of my church family, family, great friends, or friends from High School. I love that you can easily monitor your facebook account and have plenty of options regarding security. For instance, I can completely disable my wall, meaning no one can write on it, or I can only allow friends to write on it. All of my settings are set so that only friends can see any of my information. I have registered for a His Space account (http://www.hisspace.com/) and I am hopeful that it will provide the same things that my facebooking does. It is not an active site yet.

Whether I am blogging, facebooking, or hisspacing, I love the new ideas for keeping in touch and communicating. I understand the hesitancy from some, as I was very hesitant myself before starting a blog/facebook account. However, with Dover being a tech guru..it was only a matter of time that I venture into this time of technologically advanced communication. Fortunately, he also taught me how to be safe and careful with my posts/accounts. I hope this answers the question for any of you who wanted to know.