I’ve been deleting some of my online profiles as of late. Tribe.net was the first to get the ax about 6 months ago. After their overhaul last year, it just died. With the new government regulations on xxx pictures on the net, they went overboard with restrictions. The advertising was also very intrusive. You couldn’t get away from it. Chop chop.
My friendster account got the ax last month as well. What used to be a big player in the market was completely overshadowed by myspace. Having never met a single person on friendster, it was time to go. Chop
Speaking of myspace, I’ve decided to give it up as well. I’ve met 1, count’em 1 person on myspace in real life. Everyone else I already know. How many social sites do I need to communicate with the same 50 people? I hadn’t logged into myspace in so long I’d forgotten my password and had to reset it.
The purpose of a social networking site is to encourage interaction between people. Hence the title "social". From my perspectives, most of these sites are geared for capturing advertising revenue with a hind thought thrown in for users. I’ve been giving Facebook a whirl for a few months now but I’m not really optimistic. Same story, different site. I’ll give it some time though.
Ironically, I’ve met tons of folks thru blogging over the last 4 years. Now with twitter and Pownce on the horizon, I’ve met several more. Say what you will about the plethora of drivel that you can find on said sites, they quickly capture your attention given the chance.
Although I still have them, I haven’t been over to tribe.net and Friendster in several months. I’m going to hang on to those accounts, tho since I may wander over to them from time to time.
As for Facebook, I’ve only been over there for a handful of months now and have landed up getting in contact with several people I knew in high school whom I haven’t had contact with in approx. 30 years now. Granted, I find it clunky and slow a lot of the time and dealing with some of the applications can get to be a bit much but its still a nice little diversion. twitter is new for me so I’m still in the novelty phase but it’s okay so far.
I feel the same way as you. I’m hardly ever on MySpace, anymore. And Tribe was ‘let go’ a long time ago. The only ohter things I still have are twitter and last fm, and I’m not sure if last fm is really much for social networking. Anyhow, I like twitter, but I forget to update. So not sure if it’s a good outlet for me. Weeks go by and then I remember that I haven’t posted anything on it, in a long time. By the way, happy belated birthday.
there is no perfect Social Networking site because social networking means different things to different People.
For sone interesting essays on social networking phenomena you should Check out Dana Boyd at Apophenia
I too have given up on Friendster, as I interacted with most of them daily, Myspace, as too, I have their email if I don’t see them, it really isn’t a communication tool, and Tribe, but I was only there for the awesome dirty pictures. I have met a couple of my twitter friends, you included, and though social, it is also a microblog, so it kind of falls under a different umbrella of social sites. As for Facebook, I am up to 5 I have met face to face, and has been the best for me as far as that goes.
I am sure every community has it’s own thing. SF maybe a Pownce city where SD seems to be big into FB.
Last year, I pruned most of my hookup sites since I had quite a few profiles that I never used. My theory that more profile = more fun didn’t work out at all.
I use Facebook a lot, but only because of Scrabulous. If Hasbro/Mattel suceed in getting that pulled, I’m sure my participation will plummet. I don’t like MySpace (whose recent facelift makes it look a lot like Facebook) but I keep in touch with a few people from high school with it so I haven’t deleted my profile. I signed up for twitter, but like Steve, I keep forgetting to update it. I don’t get the point of the site.
I’ve met numerous blogger too, including you…even though it was just a mere blip of time in space, really….I still love that human interaction, being able to say HI, and tossing your arm around the back of a buddy. It’s excellent.
I’ve tried to MySpace thing on several occasions and I just can’t get into it. I keep getting tag requests in my e-mail so I must have signed up for something else at one point but now I have no idea how to get into it.
I’ve met quite a few fellow bloggers over the years but that’s been a result of my blogroll/the blog rolls of others I’ve stumbled upon over the years. I’m hoping to meet quite a few more folks in 2008!
I used to have a tribe acount, many years ago, and finally left because it was becoming to political within the main group I’d joined. None of the other soc ial sites seemed that good, either, so I just stick to my blog and my email.
Tribe…I’d forgotten all about tribe. I guess I should give it the ax, too. although it has some fond memories. That’s where I first came across you. Figuratively. I stil have yet to do that literally 😉
I still can’t figure out what twitter is.
Actually Facebook is the way to go now ..
http://www.facebook.com
Dan
I, too, canned all the social networking sites. I found I connect more decent people with my blog.
I personally can’t stand Facebook at all. It’s too much work to poke and be poked by people. I rather be poked in my real life.
I’m glad to read that most of you are giving up your myspace accounts. A gay man having a myspace account is like a gay man having an aol account. Don’t do it – you don’t want to be stupid like THEM!
Nearly every myspace page I’ve stumbled on is a visual NO-NO of what a Web page should look like – I can’t even focus on a myspace page most of the time because the graphics and layout are so poor I can’t read the text.
I teach at a community college, and showed my students a futuristic tech video – based on subscriptions, if myspace were a country, it would be the 8th largest in the world. Scary how that many people have been duped into a very poorly designed social networking service.
Tribe isn’t bad for what it is – the interface is easy.
Facebook is a total flop. It started out in the academic community and I thought it was for faculty and students to use professionally. This “poke” business is ridiculous. I agree with Sorata – would much rather get poked in real life…..what turned me off completely to Facebook was all of the completely useless applications you can download, one of them being (a la Baba Wawa) “If you were a serial killer, what serial killer would you be?”) Honestly, no joke – do a search on Facebook for this app – over 24,000 have downloaded it. Sick.
i’m right there with ya – but i gotta keep my myspace just for the music links… i missed so many shows by not bein’ on it, i have to keep it now.
not that i’ve met anyone on it.
I’ve met all my friends through Moby’s blog – I only use those other services because sometimes I’ll meet someone in real life who doesn’t blog and they use Myface er Myspace or Facebook, and then insist that I look at their pictures