Saturday, September 6, 2008

Rejaw Rawks

I have posted about my recent involvement in social media at my other blogs, and I thought it might be nice to post a little something about it here too. I have joined just about every microblogging service out there, including Twitter, Identi.ca, Jaiku, Plurk and so many others. And I'll probably join many others in the future. But, at this point in time, the one that I find is most interactive - at least in my own experience - is Rejaw. I know...it's a very strange name, but I don't think it's any weirder than Plurk or Kwippy. Rejaw has become my microblogging headquarters. It's the first place I go when I wake up in the morning and it is usually the last place I check in before bedtime.

Why are there so many micro/nanoblogging sites? I don't know the answer, but I can tell you that each and every one of them are different in their own right. What I like about Rejaw is the 1000 character limit, whereas most of the others only allow 140 characters. The 140-character limit is perfect for those communicating via mobile phone, but there are still some of us out there that don't even own a cell phone! Ha! Imagine that! And I am one of them! I love the 1000 character limit at Rejaw, because sometimes I have more to say than just 140 characters.

Another great thing about Rejaw is that you can share media such as video and photos. All you have to do is post the link to the source, and it will automatically embed. This is great, because I love sharing media to get others opinions and ideas, or just to make them smile. It's really a great way to meet new friends.

Rejaw's user interface is excellent. It uses AJAX, and the pages refresh automatically, so you can chat in real time. I think that's just awesome!

I have met some very cool people at Rejaw that I can now proudly call friends. We have had some very interesting conversations, and quite a bit of just chit-chat and getting to know each other. We share tons of cool stuff we find on the internet and discuss and help each other with technical issues we may be having with our website, tools, software, etc. (I'm really beginning to think we may all be internet junkies. Hmmm....) At any rate, I know I have learned so much in the last month, that I feel like I'm in information overload. Ah, but knowledge is power, no?

If you do decide to visit Rejaw and think you may want to try it, sign up, and go to the "Everyone" page and find some people to follow. It's been my experience that most people you follow, will follow you back. Also, if you do some looking around, you can find an app called Rejaw Radar for your Mac or iPhone, and a Firefox 3 add-on called RejawFox, (which is still in development and not quite in the final stages, but still works well for me). Unfortunately, there is no Rejaw Radar app for Windows...yet. But Rejaw is still very new, so I'm sure it will be coming along soon, so stay tuned. When you get there, look me up, and above all, have fun!