Social Networking

I started this blog almost 2 years ago because I wanted to find "my people"—those who love to work with handtools. (Also because my partner, in a desperate attempt to free herself from listening to me drone on and on about woodworking, begged me to.)

In the process, I've made lots of friends, connected with people in other countries, been directed to places, links, and adventures I might never have discovered otherwise, and learned a ton of new things.

Then I joined Facebook and Twitter and made even more friends and contacts.

As advertisers and marketers are scrambling to find effective ways in which to make use of social networking, many of us have experienced immediate benefits.

Fellow blogger, Rob Giovanetti, The Tatooed Woodworker, recently decided to distance himself from blogging and the entire woodworking community because of some very nasty emails he had received. Several people wrote him to reconsider.

And then it hit the Twitterdom.

Twitter was ablaze today with people in support of Rob, including people who had never read his blog. Twitterers passed his link to their followers and they passed it to their followers, and so on and so on.

Consequently, Rob has been getting lots of positive comments on his site and I'm hoping he's feeling the love.

Social networking is a lot of things (including the reason I spend too much time on the computer). You hear about the latest tools, see others' projects, learn new techniques, get ideas, share information, and as long as you avoid lightning rod topics like politics, religion, hand tools vs. power tools, and the reason for the nib on a handsaw, you can find a fabulous community—your people.