It is hard to believe the internet has been in my life only a little over 20 years. I started using it when I moved to Australia and set up my hotmail account. Not everyone I know had an account, but my family did and it was a great way to stay in contact.
When I came back to Wyoming, I set up a website called spoiledbartender in 2000. Believe it or not, there were no websites on bartending back then. I remember being at a trade show in Las Vegas for the liquor industry and I had a lot of interest in what I was doing.
The website was very homemade and I eventually took it down in 2004, but not before I saw how the internet was changing my world. I was getting attention from large liquor corporations.
When I went back to Taiwan around 2004, internet was starting to be used a little, but it was mostly for communication. Youtube didn’t exist nor did facebook have any real presence. My restaurant in Taiwan did zero advertising online. It was all magazines and other periodicals, with a little radio thrown in.
I remember when a friend told me I needed to use a new search engine called Google. That was around 2006. It is hard to believe this monster company is still so young compared to so many brick and mortar businesses.
In 2007, my use of the internet exploded.
I founded a company called Cocktail Cool LLC that not only had web presence; we also used Youtube to show off different events we were engaged in, which was considered cutting edge back then.
The internet was my friend in those years and I felt pretty savvy about what you could do online. As 2010 approached, there was so much that could be done on the web far as research, promotion and social activities, it was really hard to keep up.
Social media has become my achilles heel as the years roll by.
Twitter and I parted ways after a couple months a few years back because I just didn’t see the value of trying to stay current with my tweets.
Facebook is probably what I have utilized the most over the years, although currently I only check my account out once a week.
I learned it was very useful when I had a restaurant in Laramie during 2014-2015. Honestly, I never would have touched it, but my college age staff was insistent we set up a page. They posted meals we were having that night along with specials. It worked.
I also became very aware of Tripadviser.com too. This website put us on top out of 97 restaurants listed in Laramie. Those reviews helped my business tremendously.
When the building imploded and I had to find another way to make a living, my consulting on global liquor brands for companies in China was done totally by email and cell phone numbers that used internet.
It is amazing to me that in 15 years how far websites have come concerning liquor companies. Then there is online sales of liquor products that didn’t exist not so long ago.
Since working for the Saratoga Sun I can’t even begin to imagine what would happen if I didn’t have internet at my disposal far as getting stories done.
However recently, I am finding the internet is becoming almost too unruly for my tastes. I find myself spending more and more time going nowhere when I go online to retrieve information or try and put it forth.
Summer is here and given I love bartending and Carbon County, usually has some part-time jobs pop up, I thought nothing about applying for a bartender position I saw from an email of job postings. This site has been coming to me since I had my restaurant in Laramie with jobs. I have no intention of giving up my job as a reporter, but given making ends meet is tough and a part-time bartending job would be excellent, I pursued it.
I applied and honestly I have no idea if the resume even reached the hiring party. What I do know is that I am receiving almost a dozen emails a day from different recruiting companies telling me of jobs I could care less about or are not a match. I have even gotten a couple phone calls from recruiters that pop up on my answering machine.
When I did apply for the bartending job, it was like going down a rabbit hole just to try and answer their notice. One employment website would lead to another without letting me apply for the job. I realized going through these employment websites that were springing up in my mailbox like mushrooms in a forest after a wet rainy day, was totally a waste of time.
Then this week I went to find a moving company that was local. I don’t remember how much time I wasted, but I can tell you one such company that still has a website, the phone number is a day care center. I don’t even think there is a moving company in Carbon County, but the way Google put up so many websites on local moving, you would think there would some options.
Even looking up information is getting more convoluted as advertisers try to direct you to their websites and drop cookies into your browser.
Maybe I got spoiled as the internet was developing on how quick it delivered information in the old days. Now it seems like I have to wade through a lot of junk material and useless websites more often than I would like to admit. In the world of a reporter, wasting time needlessly really is annoying.
Don’t get me wrong, the internet is still an amazing tool and it won’t be out of my life anytime soon. But you can bet safely when it comes to finding out about local information, I am going to it the old fashioned way.
I will use my two feet and knock on doors.
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