Steelso vs Real Life

Social

I’m at waiting Langs for a meeting so while I’m waiting and slurping on a nice coffee I’ll fire out an ill-conceived and badly thought out post. Bless.

So. Social networking. I am a member of at least 10. At least. I find it tricky to keep up with all of them so I’ve looked at how I’m interacting with them and seeing what’s got to go and what’s to stay.

• MySpace. Meh Still pop on from time to time but mostly for music. It’s still number one for that. I love the ugliness, I like the wild frontier of it all. It was my second network I indulged in after MySpace and it blew my mind with the design anarchy. “You can’t put green next to pink”, I said. “Can’t we old man?” answered 1 million high school kids around the world. Good on them.
• Bebo: This is my fun time. My friends that I see each day are on here. I like the style, I like the individuality and it’s not as eye wrenching as MySpace. Though I do enjoy the ugliness of MySpace.
• Friendster. I never go there anymore though I do get emails from them every so often reminding me that it’s a friend’s birthday. The friend in question died two years ago. I do find it a comfort that he’s still reminding me of himself. It’s odd. A dead person is the only reason I interact with a social network. That’s not a strap line they’re going to use.
• Facebook. I’m enjoying it more. I think that’s more about the applications that you can add and that it feels a little more grown up than Bebo. Which isn’t a bad thing. I think that’s due to the fact that the design is uniform throughout. I like Bebo’s profile individuality. I also enjoy Facebooks uniformity and range of applications that seem to be built because they could rather than they should. It’s nice to be involved.
• Twitter. Pointless. Great, but pointless. The service is a bit up and down. But I like reading snippets of people’s life. Twittervision blows me away. I twitter, i like it.
• Pownce. Hrmmmm. If it’s Twitter vs Pownce then Twitter wins. At the moment it reminds me of the cool new bar. It looks great but no-one I know is in buying a drink.
• Linkedin. S’ok, useful sometimes. Pop in around once a month. I know people that use it very, very well. Sometimes offers connections that scare the shit out me.

More, more, more. These have all fallen by the wayside. It’s not that they offer anything bad it’s just a matter of mass. If I want to be involved in a social network it has to have a network that I want to be social with. So many just don’t at the moment. In saying that though I’ve not been to many (any?) where I’ve met new friends. You can be social in your ghetto but it’s tough to break out and meet and interact with new people on a network. However that may be saying more about me rather than the websites.

So I have a lot that I’m involved with. I use them and I find the ones that I’ve mentioned useful. I don’t feel any pressure in any of them to keep up with them. They are like pubs. Some I’ll visit as it’s cool, unusual, my friends go there. Then maybe I’ll get bored or another twinkly place will pop up and we’ll go there.

Yes.

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