Or “Yet another Facebook blog entry”
What’s this phenomenon that’s sweeping Canadian schools, universities, and Internet users? Is there some undeniable reason why I should hop onto the bandwagon?
Hearing of how people reconnected with high school friends, I borrowed Andrew’s account and searched for high school classmates and found TWO people, out of a grad class of 20. The guy’s info wouldn’t be news to me because he also keeps his alumni information very up-to-date. I don’t even know the girl who was listed as she did not graduate with my class – I suspect she would have graduated with us but finished high school somewhere else.
I remember watching a news magazine show where they interviewed a 15-year-old girl with a raging Facebook life complete with racy pictures to garner more attention. They proceeded to interview the father, asking if he knew what the site was (not really), would he sign up (gosh, no), and if he approved of her hang out there (did not disapprove). Eeek – parents need to wake up!
In my time, I’ve joined many social sites: the social sites Hi5 and WAYN, book collectors site Library Thing, and music site imeem. Before social networking was coined, I was on Asian Avenue, Black Planet, Dep Khong, and blogging site Xanga. It’s only coincidental that I managed to miss out on the two big pre-Facebook sites: Friendster and MySpace. The website features must not have sounded very interesting at the time!
I’ve received invitations for Facebook and was initially quite surprised that people my age sign up at a formerly university-centric site. I guess it’s not unlike cell phones and computers and you keep having to trade up on your social networking sites…. Instead of signing up, I’ve been devouring blog and tech articles that dissect the phenomenon, especially the conspiracy theory ones. =P.
What I’ve gathered is it’s an unprecedented integration of the services that I already use: blogging (Blogger and WordPress), photo-sharing (Flickr), and feeds (reeks of Twitter, whereas I use Google Reader). A local blogger expresses something I’ve never really vocalized but realized to be true, “I wish everyone wrote their own blog, but that’s not going to happen.” Through the easy-to-use services, members keep returning, updating, and generally providing the fodder that blogs have: even if a person isn’t the writer-type, he or she can keep you updated by posting new photos, adding new friends and groups, and making profile changes.
Though I’ve observed and felt this recent wave of new memberships from a couple of people recently bending and other articles*, I’m still holding out because …. Lil’ Sis and NPY are abstaining …. I’m too lazy to create a jazzy Facebook presence …. I don’t (want to) know how to integrate my existing webby life into their site …. I’m probably prone to soft addictions and definitely a procrastinator … I believe in the speculation that centralizing your information is bad and if I went in, I’d be in to the hilt with handing over personal information …. Information on the site is exclusive to members, particularly “friends” (the privacy argument) but I believe in equal-opportunity access via Google … though I know I’m wrong, though I’m probably confusing it with MySpace that I never joined, the site sounds kind of seedy to me …. I want to abstain from the very place you would expect to find me!
* A fellow CS alum recommends Mugshot, an open-source social-networking site that aggregates and shares your activity from existing feature-rich sites (e.g. iTunes, Flickr, youTube, del.icio.us, blogging sites, Twitter, even Facebook, and RSS feeds).