The Power of Social Media

It’s an amazing world. The power of social media has changed the world within a few years. Nowadays time and distance are quite meaningless when you prepare your vacation and when you are on vacation. People in social media even may be closer than they appear.

The first time I was in Hawaii on Easter weekend 27 years ago in 1983 for a short trip. I was based in El Paso, TX and two other soldiers and I left Texas for 5 days on Oahu. I took some pics, wrote some postal cards. I felt like in paradise.

I never forgot Hawaii but it took me 14 years to return to paradise. For 4 weeks I was in paradise while @manuela had to stay in Germany. I read a lot of travel guides. It was a wonderful but painful time. I called her often. I used a lot of phonecards (you still know what a phonecard is?). I sent postal cards. I took a lot of pictures.

In 2005 Manuela and I had our first trip together to paradise. We read a lot of travel guides. We stayed 4 weeks in paradise. Wow. We sent a lot of postal cars. We took a lot of pictures and put some of them on Flickr (after our return to Germany). Three times we went to an Internet cafe to sent some emails to friends with pictures attached. It was painful to leave paradise but we promised to come back.

Shortly after we came back to Germany I started blogging. Lateron I discovered beachwalks.tv. It was a loose tie but it never broke :-)

Last year we decided to return to paradise. In February I started this Tumblog and @hawaiitwentyten. And via @roxannedarling, Twitter, Facebook and a lot of blogs now the number of ties to Hawaii seems to explode.

We ordered an updated travel guide on Amazon but honestly I don’t think we’ll need it. I subscribed to blogs, followed people on Twitter, became a Fan of Facebook pages and read, read, read. I followed a mess of links to sites like Honolulu on Metromix or Centerd. I started to retweet and to @ people on Twitter, to comment on blogs and on Facebook. I joined conversation.

On April 23 we will arrive in Honolulu Airport. Our (social) adventure in paradise will begin. We will take a lot of pictures and some videos. We will twitter and we will blog. And we hope to meet a lot of people of Hawaii IRL. Social Media can’t replace real life but it can enrich your life and can provide you with a feeling of those people you meet on Twitter, Facebook etc. And sometimes people in social media even may be closer than they appear.

We already feel the spirit of Aloha.

Mahalo

Manuela and Frank