I’ve written before that Facebook isn’t my favourite place in (on?) the Internet, It’s just a bizarre place where people go to install strange applets rather than interact socially.
Wikipedia defines social networking (Facebook, myspace, etc) as a subset of social media. I have 60 friends on Facebook, and you couldn’t really describe us as networking; one is related to another friend, there are some work colleagues, cadets, lady footballers, family members from overseas and even a few actual passing acquaintances.
For most of these people, I have an email address or phone number, so their appearance in my friends list is more akin to trophy hunting.
One of my more attractive friends has hundreds of friends of her own, but also seems to have installed every applet available. Which is another bugbear… the technology behind them rarely matches up to expectations, and one increasingly has to invite 10, 15, 20 of your friends to use it before you can. Another friend has a slew of applets inviting you to tell her a testimonial, or send some love her way, and suchlike…
… which is always going to be an issue for people like me, who aren’t in the centre of real-world cliques. So all Facebook does is re-inforce – depending on how you look at it – my inability to interact socially, or my genius in not following trends. It’s designed to be unsociable.
Either way, I shall be concentrating on getting 53° North back in shape. WordPress is a bit ‘popular’ these days, but at least I can opt out of the bits I don’t want to install… and, maybe, install some trend-setting stuff of my own.
Viva open source!