Getting on the Ball with Our Social Networking

Readers of Western Springs Patch—I have a bit of confession to make. Over these first three weeks that this site has been live, I haven't exactly been up to date on my Facebook and Twitter updates, and you deserve better. There's a methodology for updating both simultaneously, and I promise that by the end of this week, every story—and hopefully some bonus updates, live score updates from games, and more.

Although I consider myself fairly up to date with modern technology, I have, until this summer, completely avoided using Twitter. I'm still in the process of learning everything that it's good for beyond the stereotypical "eatin' a sandwich"-style of banal tweet. We live in an age of instantaneous information processing, and nothing is quite as instantaneous as Twitter, with its draconian 140-character brevity mandate, spontaneity-friendly open text field and speed of use.

The user-friendly design elements of Twitter—hash-tags, full-site search and selective "following" allow for the filtering of information to our tastes. Early critics of the service viewed it as a narcissistic way to fill the internet with useless babble about an individual's personal actions. But it has become an indispensable tool for every journalistic outlet (and readers,) even serving as one of the only ways to receive unfiltered news from places like Iran.

On the flip side, I'm significantly more familiar with Facebook, which has gone through such incredible changes since December, 2005 when I, a high school senior, was elated to be receiving the college e-mail address necessary to join this exclusive club. Since then, Facebook has evolved so far from being just an insular network of college students that it too is critical to just about every major news organization. The world of news is becoming moved by comments and "likes."

With this in mind, it's mandatory that we at Western Springs Patch start making better use of our social networking tools—and it is my personal promise that, as of this week, we will start doing so. Please follow us on Twitter and "like" us on Facebook to follow our progress and get regular updates on when we have new Western Springs news.

Finally, we should have a couple of tremendously heartwarming profile pieces coming up this week—there are some people in this community with really tremendous stories to tell. If you happen to know of anyone with a great story to tell, please let us know—thanks!