Monday, March 31, 2014

The road to social media before it became social media

June 1995
That’s the year I joined AOL and discovered the AMC bulletin board, where the talks were about our favorite Daytime soap opera, All My Children. Pretty soon, we started getting personal showing concerns for our fellow friends and as a result, the Personal Posters board was born and thus the group became AMC PPers.

A month later, a group of 22 AOL AMC Personal Posters and friends traveled by trains, planes, automobiles and the subway from Florida, Vermont, Ohio, Indiana, New Jersey, Georgia, Michigan, Maryland, Virginia and Brooklyn to meet for the first time in New York City for an AMC PPer reunion.

The highlight of this reunion was a tour of All My Children's studio. There we met the cast, saw them tape a segment and later had an autograph session where we were able to talk with the cast as well. While we were there, there was an ABC photographer and a reporter from Soap Opera Digest. We all got a copy of the show's script and an advance issue of Soap Opera Digest. Later in the year, our visit to the All My Children studio was published in Soap Opera Digest along with the group photo. Click HERE to see article. In 1996, we had a second reunion in NYC and this time we took a tour of the editorial offices of Soap Opera Digest.

That would be the first of many PPer reunions/trips we embarked. We traveled to Chicago (1996), Richmond (1996), New England (1996), New York City (1996), Vermont (1996), Chicago (1997), Washington DC (1997), South Beach (1998), Caribbean Cruise (1998), Boston (1998), Virginia Beach (1998), Los Angeles (1998), Orange CT (1998), Seattle (1999), Seattle (2000), Chicago (2000), Virginia Beach (2000), San Francisco (2000) and Las Vegas (2006). All in all, we had a blast hanging out with each other.

Then the AOL bubble burst with many changes to their platform and finally they removed the bulletin boards and AOL was no longer our social media.

September 2003
I discovered blogs; author blogs, which led to socializing on friend’s blog. I also had my own personal blog where I talked about life in general, my participation in activities and events. At one point, I read or interacted with 100+ blogs learning all I could about an author’s work and also got snippets of their daily lives. Blogs are still around but not as proliferate as they once were. That changed when MySpace and Facebook entered the social media arena.

July 2008
I started a new blog using Wordpress to keep a journal of the books I read. I enjoyed talking about my books and that is when I learned “review” etiquette—don’t give too much detail about a book. In the beginning I was rating the books, but not I choose not to because it’s my opinion and no one else’s.


That’s the year I joined Facebook. And this time we can virtually have one-on-one conversations with our favorite authors. It was heavenly to read their status and learn about their latest book from them as opposed to a page on their website. It was also there that I discovered that I could help authors get the word out on their books. That is where a chat with an author propelled me to attend my first Malice Domestic Convention.

Guess what? Some of the AMC PPers were on FB and lo and behold the Classic PPers were reborned.

May 2009
Twitter – 140 characters – need to have constant eyes to follow all the tweets and retweets. It's good if you know how to write captions to get your message across.  I use it mainly to plug my blog postings for my “A Day in the Life” feature. My first tweet was  "learning how to "compute" using SPSS and I got it"

August 2011
The feature “A Day in the Life” first appeared on dru’s book musing. I always wanted to know what a protagonist's day was like and just that snippet gives you some insight into the character and the book. I’m having so much fun reading all that the characters have to say and I

August 2012
Joined Goodreads – was using it a lot and then there were some discord among the other users, so I just took a break from it.

Other Social Media
Google + - didn’t like it.
Pinterest – got bored

So to Fran, Ida, Blanche, Liz, Risa, Jamie, Laura, Irene, Cheryl, Hilary, Anne-Marie, Karen, Ann, Marci, Julie, Gretchen, Peggy, Beverly, Beth, Cori, Jill, Amy, and anyone else I left out, thanks for being my foray into social media.

A special thanks to Blanche H. for her suggestion for this topic.

So how did you arrive at your social media outlet?

9 comments:

  1. I tell people about my best friends who I met online mainly the AOL chatrooms. my Docs made fun of me for 1. being a fan of AMC and 2. having online friends. Dru and I with my late husband Tom were the Traveling Trio--we made a lot of those trips together that Dru speaks about. And being connected again on FB is great! Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

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  2. Ahhh The memories. We've celebrated birthdays, anniversaries, births, deaths, weddings...all the highs and lows of "real life" from our computers, tablets and phones...Contrary to some family member fears, the only ax murderers we encountered were probably from the pages of your author friends. So happy we've all moved from online friends to just plain friends! xxxooo

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    1. So true Fran so true! I cannot imagine going through any of what I went through without all of my PPer friends/sisters.

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  3. Made some wonderful long-time friends on the AOL boards. You're right, it truly was the beginning of some great connections!

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  4. And we started the virtual events and parties with Secret Santas and baby showers!

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  5. DruAnn, I cannot believe that you remembered all of those details. It was great to relive it through your blog. I didn't realize there were so many trips, cruises and all. We've really had a blast. I'll never forget learning to carve a pumpkin at Fran's house. LOL. Thanks for the lovely tribute.

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  6. I only made it to Chicago where I was blessed by these friends with a baby shower for me and Laura and Lynne. I met Anne on the plane and we met again in Denver. I also had another mini reunion in Chicago, WA, and LA. Risa came to Colorado with her husband Tom and we had dinner. She gave me free midwife advice over the phone during my pregnancy with Josh 17 1/2 years ago. I can't say how blessed I am to have these ladies in my life!

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  7. I love that we have all remained good friends through the years. And I also love seeing your blogs and postings, Dru Anne!

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