If you receive our monthly News & Views newsletter (which you should!), you might have seen my Miss Tipshare column on tech and social media tips. Here’s what I wrote for the May newsletter:
Dear Miss Tipshare,
I noticed that our organization’s Facebook page doesn’t have “fans” anymore — now we have people who “like” us. And what’s with the iPad? What’s Foursquare? WHAT IS GOING ON IN THE WORLD OF TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIAL MEDIA?!
Sincerely,
SOCIAL MEDIA FRUSTRATES ME
Dear SOCIAL MEDIA FRUSTRATES ME,
I definitely feel your pain. Growing up in the age of AOL chatrooms, Instant Messaging and texting, I feel more naturally inclined to keep up with tech news, but I have to admit: doing so is pretty difficult, especially with all the constant changes and developments.
Luckily, there’s a handy blog that brings me up to speed and tells me what I need to know now: Mashable.com. Launched in 2005, it’s THE website to get your social media news. Aside from articles about new developments in social media and technology (Twitter is launching embeddable tweets? What does that mean?! And Apple really sold 1 Million iPads?), they also have handy articles on social media trends, like “How Non-Profits are Using Social Media for Real Results”and “48% of Parents Friend Their Kids On Facebook.” (My parents are part of that 48% and I’m not sure how I feel about that yet!)

Beyond that, it helps me keep up with the issue of privacy on the web, which is really important to me. I love Mashable’s how-to blog posts. For example: “How to keep your Facebook updates private” and “How to Disable Facebook’s ‘Instant Personalization'”.

Regularly scanning headlines on Mashable.com will help you keep current with what’s going on. It might be a little overwhelming at first, but the great thing is that you can always get background by reading past blog posts. Try it!
Sincerely,
Miss Tipshare