Long ago, the word status used to mean one thing.
It’s pretty interesting that now when we think of the word status we think of needing to update it.
I’ve been on Facebook since the early days. I think Facebook came out when I was a Freshman in college. Back then, it didn’t really have a status update function and we were fine without it.
More functions came with new interfaces and things started to get creepier and creepier (and more couples started to break up) with phototagging, status updates, and the News Stream but that didn’t stop us from being obsessed with status.
Twitter came along and pretty much completely turned Facebook out, leaving all of the other functions behind and only opting for the “What are you doing?” which has since then been changed to “What’s happening?”.
LinkedIn has a status update box as well.
And guess what? They are all interchangeable. So now you can update a Facebook status that updates your Twitter status that updates to your LinkedIn status (although I would keep LinkedIn totally separate unless you have no personality.)
But Why? It’s peculiar if you think about it. There must be a reason. There must be a want for it. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been developed.
Now we are going as far as literally “checking in” on FourSquare. Tell someone that isn’t “connected” what FourSquare is. Explain it to them. They will think it’s even odder than Twitter was when we started explaining that about a year ago. I mean, why the hell would you want to participate in something like that?
Type the word status into Google. Its terrible.
Need help coming up with statuses? We’ve got sites like Generatus to help us out. When did it become an issue to not be able to think of an imaginative status? Do I really need to use Generatus?
I honestly can’t answer the question. Why do you update your status?
My name is Kareem and I am a statusaholic.
