We are entering a new age. Before there existed daily activities and events for people to be involved with. Clubs that existed to promote a common interest. Whether it was stamp collectors, hiking friends, dancing groups, or hell even swinger clubs; the point was just to meet people who enjoy doing some of the same things you do. With this wonderful invention of the internet, it was inevitable that this would happen here too.
First came things like Gopher and forums/Bulletin Boards. Later came IRC. These were virtual places where people could express their ideas and hear what others had to say about the same general issues. In their early years and sometimes even still today were considered as nerdy or too complicated to use while thought by their members as communication for the elite. This was a time when you saw an ad for something like classmates.com you knew it was just an ad and hopefully noted it as white noise.
Now on the buzz of the 21st century someone discovered what was uncool about those static sites was that you had to go searching for them, and that you could read them. No thats not a typo, I mentioned that you could read those "old" ways of communication. So these bright people decided to invent things like MySpace and Friendster. I have to admit I tried these.
I tried MySpace,
I tried Friendster,
I tried Facebook,
I tried Orkut,
I tried Linkedin.
I even tried Xanga.
Now here is my feedback.
WTF?
You enter myspace and you are greeted by a creepy perve, Tom, who is like "I'll be your friend" or some non sense. Then you basically are on webpage where you are constantly bombarded with messages from users wanting to be your friend. And since everyone choses some random alias for themselves when you go to figure out who the person is by clicking on their profile, and then it happens, the unthinkable. I thought this era of the internet ended early. Most people "design" their myspace sites with every bit of html graphic and color available to them. You know making it so all that appears is a blinding array of colors with some really hard to see text and images. But they might be your friend afterall. This is what kills me. This simple act is what drives people to this site. Users take the notion of a "virtual friend" as one in the same as the word friend, in the physical sense. They they actually start arguments in reality about the situation. I was on the train yesterday and the two HS students behind me were discussing this.
Girl: Tiffany is such a bitch. I couldn't believe it. She thinks other girls are bitchy oh my god. I moved her out of my Top 8 and she is completely not talking to me. I was like whatever I mean Tanya is such a closer friend.
Guy: Oh I understand. I invented the my top 16 that way people don't feel so bad. I'm still in your top 8 though right?
... Then they then proceeded to call others on their cells and discuss the same situation to the receivers.
I don't get it. People who are like Tom, or the ones who are constantly wanting to be your friend and all they ask is that after adding them they can spam the hell out of you. What is their purpose?
Next up was friendster. This one while not being as loud with all the ads, it felt almost like it was full of pervs and slutty women. It also was vulnerable to the same "marketing" and phishing tactics that occurred with myspace since it was all free sign up.
Facebook, was once one of the less noisy of the sites. It was ad driven but its user's had a commonality between them. They were all in school. This commonality expanded throughout its years, first it was college, college alumn, then High School, then Employer, now everyone. There is still a separation between its internal
notion of networks and a suite of privacy settings to guard against the invasion of privacy and exploits the other sites impose but its only a matter of time. The Facebook has been accumulating certain features that these other sites have that users apparently love. I remember a feature Facebook originally had which was more like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. It would tell you how you were linked to others. You could even click a link that would generate a map of all your friends and their linkages. I imagine it has gotten too big to generate or be meaningful with all of its users, but it was still a cool concept.Orkut, is Google's baby. It is an invite only (a plus) but its sort of more global. I don't mean to sound pathetic but I don't have too many global friends. The problem I find with it i think is that the few global friends I do have I would rather email them or IM them. Hell sometimes its easier to just pick of the phone. I guess I don't have too many of those friends who are more, "wonder what they are up to" across the world which is more of what this place seems like.
LinkedIn I haven't visited too much. It is more of a corporate social network. The idea of LinkedIn is what I originally thought of when someone said social networking. Basically the idea is simple. You worked with someone at some point. They have a profile basically describing the company they are at, their position and thats about it. After that the idea is that as people move from company to company the bond stays. And one day you may be deciding to move to another company where your ex-coworker, lets say Tom for consistency's sake, is working at company Y where you think you might want to work. You can ask Tom what's up, how's life, how's the job, can you refer me? Cool concept of what Monster I think wanted to achieve but never could with its networking component.
Xanga (pronounced Zanga)... hmm not a lot to say. I am not Asian so I was sort of shunned on entering. I have a lot of Asian friends though and it seems popular among them. From what I can see its just another myspace though, but without Tom. Tom is only welcome in myspace since Tom is not Asian either.
There was another one I thought was interesting. Last FM is a social networking site based on music. The idea is simple. You create a login name and your profile is automatically generated by the music you listen to and the music you repeatedly listen to. The idea is that you should be able to see some patterns between individuals who listen to a common set of artists or songs and then can form some sort of friendship whereas recommendations flow more easily. The problem I found is that the plugin needed to generate the profile needs to integrate with your music player of choice. If you don't use the music player that is implemented for it doesn't work as well. I personally like iTunes but don't have the luxury of using it. Check the site out if you have a sec.
Another one is Blue Dot. This sort of reminds me of a start up I was once part of. The idea is that you broadcast your interests by going from site to site just as you normally do. You consciously signal that you enjoy a site(like this one) and move on your way as you would normally. Meanwhile back at the site, the link gets added to your profile. This implementation I could imagine it being a bitch to understand what the hell is going on. Especially if there are a lot of active travelers.
Well I guess I might be old in net years or just sort of bias towards not what is the most popular sites. I guess I am more of a sucker for what I call Embedded Web Software. It sort of like the little web tools or sites that are embedded in your day to day, click to click perusal of the internet.
