The Economy, Responsibility and Twitter

I come from a generation where the great depression is made up of story tales of hardship, togetherness, and struggle told by my elders. I don't remember it and I can't fathom it any more than I can fathom the story of sleeping beauty or the renaissance. So I turn on the switch to the analytical part of my brain to make my own determinations of the theatrical media reports.

During the Great Depression, in the United States, the percentage of the population that was out of work rose to 25 percent of the workforce at its highest level. This number translated to 15 million Americans being without work. But times are very different in 2009, then they were in 1930. The population is larger, there are more women and men leaving for work everyday, jobs have changed and technology has changed. According to my calculations (I am no mathematician), for the US unemployment rate to reach 25 percent again, 35.5 million people will need to be out of work. So where do we stand? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the number of unemployed persons increased by 851,000 to 12.5 million in February, and the unemployment rate rose to 8.1 percent. Not good, not comfortable, but you know what? I don't think the sky is quite falling either.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that everything is fine. It is not. We've had it pretty darn good since the end of the depression and even better still in the more recent years. But as the english proverb goes, "all good things must come to a end". Things are not going to be as easy as we've grown accustomed to, we are going to have to work a little harder and be a little more responsible for ourselves and our own. Responsibility should and will take on a whole new meaning for us, that is if we are doing it right. So I ask you, what are you doing about it? Are you sitting around waiting from someone else to fix it? Are you talking about how bad things are? Or are you taking control of your own mindset? Are you talking with people like yourself? People who are empowerd to change things, people who can change things?

My point is you can read the news reports on the american economy. Reports with words like grim, destroyed, wrenching and brink. Or you can start being selective about what your reading and who your talking to. I'm not using google for the same purpose anymore. Google no longer gives me what I need or what I want. It is just a tool to aggragate and display information posted by whoever and whomever. Instead, I'm listening and talking with a whole new network on twitter. A network that is optimistic and sharing ideas, successes and lessons learned.

According to Twitter's homepage the service is defined as "A service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? However like all tools, Twitter is what you make of it. You have to follow the right people, you have to offer valuable information, you have to be transparent and honest. If you are complaining to your network and talking about what lunch was for the day; your going to hear people complaining and telling you about their newest aliment. You will get back what you put in. Below is snapshot of my favorite things that my network shared with me this past week. I hope they inspire and make you smile, as they did me.

@prnewswire Editor who had earned 6 figures until she was laid off last year now interns to become tech-savvy http://burnurl.com/xokiHn

@AgencyConfesses Friday Ad Haiku: Responding to a-holish blog comments http://tinyurl.com/b82plv

@george_murphy RT @city_paper DC takes one more baby step toward admitting that Baltimore is, like, totally the cooler city: http://tinyurl.com/akdbpj

Lost it, Found it, Not going to lose it again! Here is a blog post from @rohitbhargava that I found worthy. http://is.gd/c9Ja

@mashable It's #followfriday! The usual reminder of how #followfriday works: http://tinyurl.com/cz545c

@adamostrow Reading "MySpace is Toast" - http://burnurl.com/lIzsuF ... nice to-the-point headline!

@CocoOnTheWeb The most impressive 27-year old you’ve never heard of? Barack Obama’s speechwriter: http://tr.im/2k3k

@mashable Reading: "The Power of Social Networking to Save the World (from zombies)" http://bit.ly/105EJb

@mashable Reading: "A Twitter Basics Primer" http://tinyurl.com/b83yay

@MrTweet Which great organization or individual should @MrTweet feature next? Tell us: http://bit.ly/1SaYrZ (RT if you know great folks!)

@jhawkw “The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.” — Chinese Proverb

LG