Cookingwithsocialmedia

As a child of the 90s, my online footprint is pretty extensive. When I google myself, I find articles I've written, snippets from middle school newsletters, as well as half-formed profiles from briefly popular social networking sites that I really shouldn't have joined but was too young and silly to know any better. The internet and I are old frenemies--for the most part we get along, but we've had our issues in the past. My point is, when I started last week's activity, I did not anticipate that I would be surprised in any way.

I have a facebook and twitter account, and don't use either as much as I used to. I've only ever used them to interact with people that I have met in my everyday life (or IRL, to use the internet lexicon). I've always been a little leery of opening up my social networks to outside observers, having been schooled since middle school that online predators lurked around every corner. With this in mind, I decided to avoid direct interactions with strangers, and started the week by resurrecting my Google Reader account.

I haven't used my Google Reader in several years, and previously used it mostly for catching up on celebrity gossip. The topic I decided to immerse myself in was not education-related, but rather a new hobby of mine--cooking. So the first thing I did was a straightforward google search for cooking blogs to add to my reader, and found [|this article.] I then added many of these to my Google Reader, sat back, and waited for the result.

I was immediately stunned by the scope of what my Reader now offered me. Daily I get new recipes to try, as well as articles written by people who have been pursuing cooking as a calling for far longer than I've dabbled (some for longer than I've been alive!) I found myself unable to cope with the sheer volume of recipes that I wanted to try, but was unsure how to store them, short of printing them all out. Since Delicious is apparently on its way out, I chose to keep a record of all of the recipes I wanted to try using [|blinklist.com], a site that can save links (for a list of all the recipes I've been bookmarking, click [|here], or see the screenshot below for an idea of how Blinklist works).



Next I tried a site that a lot of my friends have been using, but that I honestly thought sounded like a complete waste of my time. I haven't completely changed my mind, but must grudgingly admit that [|Pinterest]is mildly entertaining. It's kind of like my BlinkList page, but with more pictures (for my Pinterest boards, click [|here] or see below).



So far, none of my online adventuring had involved me interacting in any way with other human beings, other than posting random images and recipes to Pinterest. My next step, therefore, was to post about my experiences on my [|blog] to share with the internet as a whole.

I'm still working on this aspect, but so far I've really enjoyed trying new technology to further my hobby. Now, I just need to get the time to try some of these recipes...maybe once school is out! :)