Most people nowadays know me for my online activity on Twitter and Facebook, and primarily on a local level. But did you know that I’ve been active online in other communities for more than a decade? I had gotten into different online communities like Epicurious.com and iVillage.com, but none were as satisfying or helpful as Fodors.com (mostly because I’m addicted to traveling).
My profile says I’ve been a member since 2003, but I was actually active on the site for years before that — prior to mandatory registration, and prior to settling on a regular screen name. Back then, online communities were formed on forums, or bulletin boards. People would post a subject, and people would gather at the post to discuss it. One big advantage to this: You can catalog discussions and can easily find them years later to update or continue. One big disadvantage: the pace of bulletin boards is slow, since people log in occasionally to contribute.
It’s an online community nevertheless, and since we all have a common interest — travel — the more social people will meet up with their online friends in different destinations. On Twitter, we call it a tweetup. On Fodors, we call it a GTG (short for Get ToGether). It’s been a rewarding experience, as I’ve made friends with people from different cities in their hometowns as well as around the world, even staying at their homes on vacation (aloha to Carol and Alastair de Wet in Cape Town!). These are people of all ages and backgrounds, but all with one main interest: the desire to see the world.
Anyway, one of our old-time posters is MonicaPileggi, who is actually a Kaiser grad but now lives in Maryland. She came back to visit this week, and some other Fodorites happened to be in town, so we decided to have a GTG. Monica wanted to go to Tiki’s Bar & Grill because we had GTG’d there before and she liked the food. Here’s what we ate, and who we GTG’d with.
I’ve since gotten a gig with Fodors updating their Oahu restaurant section (of course!), but that’s totally separate from my participation in their community. It sure does help when I’m updating the travel guide, though!
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Don't you love connecting outside of Hawaii? My first out-a-state community was Food Network (FN). Did that for many, many years; made many, many friends from all over the world. When FN discontinued its communities, some of us split off and created our own. We go on annual get-togethers every year -- Vegas, Nashville, New Orleans, to name a few. This year we're headed back to Vegas in August. Wahoo! Love your traveling, Melissa!
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