All posts in Women

Valentines Day is right around the corner, that’s right, February 14th, and Heineken are giving you the opportunity to serenade someone! The campaign, Serenade, is attached to a Facebook Application, which allows you to choose someone to serenade in a few easy steps.

Take a watch of the video:

Right, let’s serenade! Here’s what you’ll do:

1. Click through to the Serenade Your Date Facebook application.
2. Who you want to serenade.
3. Why you want to serenade them.
4. What you want to do with them.
5. Why you chose that person.

DONE! Wait, check this out: once the request has been sent to someone, you have to wait and see if they accept it! Haha, gota love that mechanism, the one little thing that will potentially make this campaign go nice and viral.

The question is: because it’s a leap year, are all the ladies going to serenade the men this time *wink*

Please note that this is a sponsored post.

Social networks have changed the dating game quite a bit. With real time networks and geo location, it’s pretty easy to keep track of the object of our affections, but at the same time, it can get pretty frustrating. We start asking questions and our minds go into overdrive, usually totally unnecessarily, resulting in undesired outcomes.

Don’t worry, I’ve got some tips and tricks to keep you sane and to help your relationships flourish.

1. Connecting

Twitter would be ideal place to meet people, as it would cut out the awkward friend request process of Facebook. Simply follow like minded people and get chatting to them. Remember to be yourself and you will naturally attract similar people toward yourself. Once you get to know each other a bit better, you can progress to Facebook.

2. Facebook

Facebook gets a tip all on its own. Firstly, when sending that friend request, keep it simple. Don’t add a message to it. Just send the request and wait for it to be accepted. It may take hours or days or weeks. Just wait. Don’t turn it into a big deal. In fact, don’t even mention it. You might come across as desperate and freak the person out. Don’t worry, you’ll get accepted.

Secondly, don’t comment on every single bit of activity. Sure, if it’s something worth a comment, go for it. But every single status update, link and photo? Forget about it. The same rule applies to ‘Likes’. Keep them relevant, but don’t put them everywhere. It’s overwhelming.

So things end up going well between you and the significant other. You meet in real life and you’ve become an item. Before you go off and change your relationship status and tag the other person, run it past them first. Some people prefer to have their privacy respected. Telling the world about your relationship status on Facebook is a pretty big deal.

3. Twitter

Twitter is less personal than Facebook and also less restricted. You can see the conversations your significant other is engaged in. This doesn’t mean you need to join the conversation. Do so by all means if you’re tagged, otherwise carry on reading your feed.

Don’t use Twitter as an instant messaging platform between you and your significant other either. Having a conversation is fine, but tweeting a reminder to pick up bread and milk is not. There are direct messages, or DMs for that, or other instant messaging platforms.

4. Stop obsessing

This goes for all social networks. Don’t read too much into what the object of your affection shares. Stop stalking them. Go out and pursue your interests and go do what makes you the person you are.

5. Keep it real

Remember to be yourself and have fun. Even if you are a little lonely, you don’t need to announce it. In fact, change the way you think about it. Instead of thinking you’re lonely, rather reframe that thought and remind yourself that you’re available. Talk to different people and share the things that interest you.

It’s not a popularity contest. Sure, we all like to have our follower numbers up, but keeping conversations genuine and relevant will connect you to like-minded people.

As an interesting aside, did you know that Facebook has been cited as being responsible for a third of divorce cases?

How does social media affect your relationships?

So for the most of us we love social media, we love facebook and twitter and most of daily experiences are published to our walls or feeds and our mates read what’s going on in our lives via the internet. It’s great it’s interesting and relevant. So we celebrate milestones online, graduations, engagements, weddings, birthdays and births. Now that’s all good and well and perfectly acceptable but the reason for my writing this letter is not to rave on about the shining brilliant side of the social media coin it is more to raise awareness of the other side of the coin. Technology is developing at an alarming rate we all know it but I think sometimes we don’t think of the implications that this can have on our daily life – the real practical side of things. I had an incident a weekend or so ago where someone tagged my child on their facebook wall. Innocent enough or is it? Think about it.

The paedophile sitting two blocks away from the park in your neighbourhood. He takes a photograph of your child. He loads the photograph to a search engine. Facial recognition is real it is available and unless you have purposefully unchecked the box on your security settings in facebook it is turned on. So your son or daughters face is loaded to the search engine and dependent on what you have published your child biography is available to the criminal. It is that real. Geotagging, what’s this? It’s the process of adding geographic location data, latitude and longitude coordinates as well as city and state details, to photos you take with your camera. These details or metadata are added to photos existing EXIF data (Exchangeable Image File Format) and are made available to other programs. So I am sure you can see where this is going…

As you add images to your facebook stream you innocently add them thinking no one outside of your friends list can view them. You might even add additional viewing security settings that are available to facebook users and you feel secure in that all is safe. Please remember this letter the next time you load a photograph of your little princess/prince in the bath. Don’t load anything online you wouldn’t feel comfortable with the www seeing. This is the reality. Nothing online is actually free. The fun apps you apply to your facebook profile are not paid for with your money but rather with your data. Heard the saying data is the new oil? It’s true. Apps gather data about you and by allowing them access to your profile you are also allowing them access to your friends list. Any data online is accessible to anyone a) if they want it and b) if they know how.

Keep your kids safe, keep them offline.

I am woman a wife and a mother and yes I have gotten behind the podium on this particular issue but please feel free to read up on this very issue online I have included some links that talk to the points I have raised above. Prevention is always better than a cure.

Kindly written by Vanessa.

Some resources:

• Are you Child’s Photographs Safe Online? The simple answer is no! link
• Sharing with the expectation of privacy is leading us down the wrong path. link
• Twitter pics not your own. link
• SXSW 2011: Can Facebook photos be used commercially? link
• Awesome handbook for all parents – cyber angels. link
• Look at realities – link (whole division at US FBI to ‘innocent images’)