Social Media Lover Offers Perspective on Facebook Chat

sarah_hutton_facebook_chat.jpg

Sarah Hutton, a writer for Our American Shelf Life and a contributor here on Adrants was featured in a video, shot by Amanda Mooney (also an ASL writer and Adrants contributor) about Facebook chat.

Sarah tells the story about how she like to stay in touch (stalk?) with a friend abroad using Facebook chat because her friend is never on AIM or iChat. She also offers perspective on chat, friending and social media in general.

In response to Amanda’s question, “What do you think about brands chatting with you on Facebook?”, Sarah minces no words, saying, “That’s not OK.” She hits on the important notion that people (as in actual human beings) can’t really be friends with a brand as represented by some autobot representative that just spews corporate babble. That’s not to say brands can’t have employees who represent themselves as brand ambassadors chat as a human who just happens to work for a particular brand.

Just prior to April 15, I said on Twitter I was sick of doing taxes and couldn’t wait to be doen. Less than five minutes later, I received a tweet from HRBlock. I thought, “Oh great. Another faceless brand trying to invade my personal bubble.” But, after trading several messages back and forth with the HRBlock representative, it turned into an informative and productive conversation for me. Brand can certainly “join the conversation.” It’s all in how it’s done, though.

Picture of Steve Hall

Steve Hall

RECENT ARTICLES

TRENDING AROUND THE WEB

Psychology says the person who is kind to everyone and close to no one isn’t always lacking in the capacity for intimacy — they’re managing their exposure to it, and management and intimacy are fundamentally incompatible, which is why the closeness they’re managing against never quite arrives

Psychology says the person who is kind to everyone and close to no one isn’t always lacking in the capacity for intimacy — they’re managing their exposure to it, and management and intimacy are fundamentally incompatible, which is why the closeness they’re managing against never quite arrives

Global English Editing

Women who have developed something genuinely beautiful in their character by the time they reach their 60s and 70s aren’t the ones who were always kind — they’re the ones who went through enough to become bitter and chose something else instead, who were let down enough times to close off and decided to remain open anyway

Women who have developed something genuinely beautiful in their character by the time they reach their 60s and 70s aren’t the ones who were always kind — they’re the ones who went through enough to become bitter and chose something else instead, who were let down enough times to close off and decided to remain open anyway

Global English Editing

People who have quietly accumulated real financial security over a lifetime don’t talk about money the way people who are trying to signal wealth do — they’re unhurried, they never seem to be calculating, they replace things when they wear out rather than when they impress, and there’s a specific quality of ease in how they move through the world that has nothing to do with spending and everything to do with never once having to wonder whether they can

People who have quietly accumulated real financial security over a lifetime don’t talk about money the way people who are trying to signal wealth do — they’re unhurried, they never seem to be calculating, they replace things when they wear out rather than when they impress, and there’s a specific quality of ease in how they move through the world that has nothing to do with spending and everything to do with never once having to wonder whether they can

Global English Editing

I’m 65 and I spent my entire adult life being the most competent person in every room I entered and it took a therapist asking me one very quiet question at 63 to help me understand that the competence wasn’t confidence — it was the strategy of a child who learned that being needed was the closest available substitute for being loved

I’m 65 and I spent my entire adult life being the most competent person in every room I entered and it took a therapist asking me one very quiet question at 63 to help me understand that the competence wasn’t confidence — it was the strategy of a child who learned that being needed was the closest available substitute for being loved

Global English Editing

I grew up in the 1960s when a handshake still meant something and your word was a contract — and I’m watching a world where nobody believes anything anyone says anymore and wondering if we lost something irreplaceable when we decided trust was naive

I grew up in the 1960s when a handshake still meant something and your word was a contract — and I’m watching a world where nobody believes anything anyone says anymore and wondering if we lost something irreplaceable when we decided trust was naive

Global English Editing

Psychology says the reason retirement feels like disappointment for so many people isn’t that they didn’t plan well enough financially — it’s that they spent forty years building an identity around being necessary and productivity gave them permission to exist that leisure never learned to provide

Psychology says the reason retirement feels like disappointment for so many people isn’t that they didn’t plan well enough financially — it’s that they spent forty years building an identity around being necessary and productivity gave them permission to exist that leisure never learned to provide

Global English Editing