Boost Your Popularity – Flame Facebook
I recently wrote that I don’t get social networking, with interesting results. I posted links to all my various profiles in various places, and I now have ten friends on Facebook (up from two when I wrote the first article) and one flickr friend as well.
I find it interesting that people respond in this way – its nice to be friends with my friends though so I’m certainly not complaining. It is a bit strange though when a website announces that you are now friends with someone … that you’ve been dating for seven years :)
Am I any closer to “getting” social networking? Not really. I’ve written on walls, given gifts, and joined groups. Suggestions for other exciting things to do are most welcome …
Having pondered this for a bit I think social networking websites are a lot more relevant when you don’t have the skills (or perhaps inclination?) to start setting up your own blog, intergrating flickr/twitter into your own pages etc… etc… If you think about it you already “social network” a lot – you blog, you’re active on discussions lists and bulletin boards, you’ve met and got to know ‘friends’ entirely online – you just don’t think of it like that cos you’re not doing it via a single social networking website.
There is something a little weird about the whole Facebook hysteria… but having messed about with Ecademy and LinkedIn it’s fun to suddenly find somewhere where all my non-techie friends are hanging out. I quite like having a space where I know only people i’ve actively connected to can see my stuff. And I like keeping up with what friends are up to without all the effort of actually interacting with them ;-)
But no, in the end there is nothing all that exciting to do there.
Sophie: You’ve given me quite a lot to think about there. I’d also like to congratulate you on managing to write a comment longer than the original blog post itself :)
Its true that I already keep track of most people in an online manner, either because they’re online friends that I haven’t met in person, or because they’re friends that are now a long way away (you know who you are, hi guys). I’ve been using LinkedIn for a while and that is sometimes useful, but its oriented towards people’s professional lives. Without email, blogs, MSN/jabber and IRC I honestly would lose contact with loads of people quite quickly, now you mention it. Thinking of Facebook as another interface rather than the miracle that the hype seems to make out, is probably the best thing.
I think I’m starting to get facebook though, I’ve got the aquarium thing and managed to lose about 20 minutes of my life to it yesterday! If anyone would like to send me a fish, I’d be unreasonably excited by that :)