the power of social media

I know I have whined about it enough on here that I lost my camera last weekend at BlogHer. I know, poor me and enough already. I have used up all of my excuses on why being pregnant with child numero two has eaten up my entire brain and left with me with the crappy remains. My husband is sick of hearing me whine about the fifteen or so pictures that are lost and how I am lucky it wasn’t my DSLR that I lost because it would have resulted in some divorce papers. So instead of vocally whining I whined with the click on my keyboard to my newest obsession, Twitter. I have been a hater since I first learned what that damn little blue bird icon meant, I didn’t see the point and have laughed at the silliness of the Twitter jargon. I mean what’s the point of the # and @? I honestly wouldn’t know the true meaning of the hashtags and handlebars until I attended BlogHer. I have to first admit that I did create a Twitter account when everyone was first doing it, but was confused and didn’t see the point when I could easily use Facebook to update everyone on my super fun and fab life. So, I left it and never revisited it. It wasn’t until a few days prior to the conference that everyone on my mommy blog page was making lists to update their Twitter accounts so we could find one another, find clues, parties, etc. That I really thought I should really give this thing a go, so I re-signed up and slowly began understanding all of the jargon. During sessions I was communicating with #SurferWife so she could find me in the convention center to give me my eyedews for participating in the FlashMob and following the tweets of fellow bloggers on where to score free Legoland tickets. By the end of day three I was finally getting the hang of it and luckily it worked out in my favor. Like I stated in my previous post, the conference sent me through a whirlwind, not only have I lost my brain from this growing being sucking the life out of me but the conference really did mess my mind up. I didn’t have a brain so when I took my Nikon Coolpix camera out of my handbag in the Hershey’s suite to take a picture with my friend, Alanna, I thought that I placed it right back in that black abyss. That evening I went to dinner at the Melting Pot and didn’t feel my camera in the bag but assumed it was one of the six swag bags I had filled that lined the backseat of my Murano. It wasn’t until I got home from the conference at midnight Sunday morning that I realized it was gone. I racked my brain and started tweeting the ladies I spent the last few days with. I fell asleep so angry at myself for losing something, I have always been proud of my memory but being defeated really got to me. My husband was mad at me for coming home and being irate, which I cannot blame him for. I slept on it and woke up the next morning realizing where I had left the camera and that’s when the power of social media kicked into full force. I tweeted, and people re-tweeted. Even people I did not know and honestly it’s funny to say that even the rep from Johnson’s & Johnson’s who when Alanna and I were making our expo rounds I couldn’t wait for him to stop talking just so we could get our stamp and head the heck out re-tweeted my camera S.O.S. I created a blog post on BlogHer’s site begging for help, I Facebooked it enough where I am sure close friends deleted me because I was so annoying. I kept using Twitter trying to get the attention of BlogHer writers to see that I was mentioning them and needed help, but in the back of my mind I was questioning, why would they want to help?

It wasn’t until Monday morning when I got a RT (re-tweet) from Denise at BlogHer stating she was looking up her Hershey’s contact info and she would get back to me. I also saw responses from ladies around the country on my BlogHer post asking if I had any luck and how they too were hoping to seek refuge on the person who took my BlogHer story from me. I would check my e-mails in the middle of the night hoping to find a subject line reading, “found Nikon camera”. A few more days would go by and I was going through my e-mails and noticed I did have one from Hershey’s. I scoured through the e-mail as I usually do bypassing key and meaningful words and phrases like, “one of my associates turned in a silver camera to the Marriott front desk”. It soaked in a few minutes later and I immediately looked up the hotel information and called the lost and found. Of course, they were gone for the day so I left a message and waited until the next morning for a call. I gave the department fifteen minutes to arrive for their shift, check messages, etc and then started calling again. It went straight to voicemail again so I hung up and called the hubs. He said he would have his people work on it and he would get back to me. I waited all of ten minutes and called him back. He told me people are actually working and to be patient. I told him that I have been impatient for all of my twenty-nine years and that I was now bypassing his UPS’ness and I called again. The woman answered the phone and I began to tell her my story, she said she did have a camera and I started babbling telling her that if she did have my camera how she would be my best friend forever and when she asked what the last picture was I told her and she replied, “it’s yours!” I started screaming like I had just won Justin Bieber concert tickets. Luck was on my side, or shall I say, social media was on my side. If it weren’t for Twitter, Facebook or the power of e-mail I would have been out a camera that I cannot financially replace. The women I doubted or really the doubt I placed on having any honest people left in this world was proved incorrectly.

I know this was a long, drawn out way of announcing that I have my camera back but isn’t it funny how social media now drives our lives? Has Twitter, Facebook or even that archaic Myspace helped you in any way? Most of us these days are afraid of the phone and forget what it’s like speaking to someone or asking for help verbally. I would really love to hear from you to see how social networking has helped you, because I don’t know about you, but all that doubt I once carried about hashtags, handlebars and status updates have really proved to me the power of the social media.