The versatility of social media is one of its greatest assets. If you have an interest in something you can most likely discover others with the same interests on one of the social media platforms. From Facebook, Twitter, blog posts, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube to Pinterest, Flickr, Instagram and Reddit – you will be hard pressed to NOT find something you are looking for.
The other day, we lost our dog, and it was a traumatic experience for us. She saw some deer in the backyard; and in her crazed state, she knocked down the pet gate. Molly went after the deer into the woods behind our place. Being that it was raining and approaching the evening hour, I mentioned that when she gets done hunting, she will come back home. We placed her bed and food onto the porch for when she returned.
The next day, Molly was not on the porch. We were disheartened. Being that I am a bit “old” school, we decided to print some flyers with Molly’s picture. After I returned from work, we started in my neighborhood and worked our way out. We drove to all the neighbors to see if they had seen her, and we stapled the flyers to telephone poles and community boards. We were going at it for hours, and it seemed to be getting hopeless. (Now, I would not have written this blog if it had a sad ending.)
As we continued to make our journey, I went up to a house and knocked on their door. A gentleman answered, and I gave him the story of how our dog got out of her pen. As I was still speaking, my significant other rolled down her window and shouted to me that she found Molly. I was a little confused as I headed back to the vehicle. She told me that a picture of Molly was on her Facebook. (Of course Molly was making herself right at home as the picture showed her laying on a couch). We were extremely happy that we had finally found her. Apparently, a lady that found Molly posted her picture, and tagged her friends. Her friends then sent it out to their friends, and before you knew it, we had her picture on Facebook. With a friend request, we were able to receive her location and start our way to pick her up. Believe it or not, Molly was over 2 miles away from our house.
Being curious, I looked at the timeline of the post. I noticed that she posted the picture at 6:44 p.m., and we were looking at Molly at 7:28 p.m. that same day. This was definitely much quicker and easier than hanging flyers and knocking on doors. I was amazed at how fast and simple that this social networking reunited us with Molly.
This got me thinking about social media. Facebook is the largest social network with almost 2 billion users throughout the world. In looking at the nature of Facebook, it is more than reuniting with friends or finding lost dogs. It also unites companies. EXAIR has a Facebook page in which we post videos, photos, and blogs of compressed air solutions. We can show you how to save money by using less compressed air with our products and how to solve every day problems with your compressed air system. We would love to have you as a friend at www.facebook.com/exair. We may not be able to find your dog, but we sure can share some stories, solve compressed air problems, and become good friends.
John Ball
Application Engineer
Email: johnball@exair.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_jb
