ShanaRay.com

I know I have been MIA from wine blogging as well as a bit annoying over the past few months, talking about this mysterious “gig” that I have going on…. No, it is not the Murphy Goode job, though thank you to all that said I would be a perfect fit for the position… I agree, but alas, it is not to be.

I now FINALLY can officially tell you that my new part time job is taking care of Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey’s social media efforts.  Congresswoman Woolsey has been a very liberal, outspoken representative of most of Sonoma County and all of Marin County for the past 16 years and is just stepping into the social media world to bring her voice to the online masses. You may know her from her recent arrest for protesting genocide in Darfur, or for her outspoken speeches on the war in Iraq.

The website WoolseyforCongress.com has been redone and officially launched with a few new features and the new Facebook Page is up and running.  Her Twitter profile has been saved too, but that is a possible future project.

The new website has one new addition that I am VERY happy to be telling you guys about, it is a blog we decided to call a Progressive POV.

Each week I will be talking to her or someone on her staff and then writing a blog post from my own perspective about the issues that she is tackling.  No, I have no prior political experience, but that is part of the reason that the team chose me.  They want an outsider that can talk about the issues from a fresh perspective…  Not repeat the same (sometimes dreary) political press releases that you see on other politician’s websites. You can see Congresswoman Woolsey’s explanation of what we are doing here.

I did want to let you all know that after my first promotion of this new venture and maybe to tell you about a REALLY cool online contest or two, I will NOT be talking politics on shanaray.com (and yes, I will still be a wine blogger and social media consultant).

Thank you all for dealing with me and my mysterious “gig” that I have been talking about for the last few months…. I am asking you all to help me out and become a supporter on the Facebook Page,  spread the word about what I am doing, come to a fundraising event or add my weekly blog posts to your RSS feeder…. Or most importantly, donate to the cause.

*shana.

Earlier today a colleague of mine reminded me to check my Twitter account. So I went on this afternoon at 2PM to take a look.

The latest Twitter was from Hugh MacLeod.

It was posted 1 minute earlier.

My response Twitter said “What?? Heath Ledger is dead??”

So of course, me being a pop culture junkie, I had to go onto my iGoogle home page to see if People.com had posted anything…… THEY HADN’T!!

10 minutes later I looked again and it was up. The article said “Heath Ledger found dead, more information to come…”

So through the wonders of social networking, I found information out before it hit the magazine’s website.

I had to go to my MySpace page to change my status to “Shana is shocked that Heath Ledger is found dead.” Instantly, 4 people left me comments is response and 2 people changed their own status to “RIP Heath”

Interesting…….

On a completely different note, today is the last day to resister to vote in The CA primaries. I was reminded of this by a friend of mine who posted MySpace bulletin this morning

“If you haven’t already—today is your last chance to register to vote on February 5th.”

I took it one step further and in my bulletin I provided my MySpace friends the url to download the application and the address where to send it to. An hour later a few of my friends commented as well as sent out their own bulletins about the subject.

The uses for social networking are endless, but mindless entertainment (I apologize for calling a talented actor’s death, mindless entertainment—It is just for emphasis) spreads much faster than actual news.

I love that it is easy to get into the head of the consumer, because for the most part, it is my own head.