Social Networking…
I’ve been tinkering around with social networking a bit, specifically with Facebook. It’s nice, nothing amazing, but it is nice to contact some old friends, and to meet new people. My biggest complaint is that it doesn’t seem to have a focus or a direction, which isn’t a bad thing, but it isn’t really a good thing either. I guess it just makes Facebook unique. I’ve set up Ubuntu 10.04 to integrate with it, along with Twitter, and it works well. If it wasn’t for that, I probably wouldn’t use it. Right now I see it as more of a toy. The privacy policy doesn’t permit me to use it for much, and most of the notifications I get are about games my friends are playing. I’ll try it out for a bit longer. I may end up with a few crazy ideas myself to try to build something similar but with more focus. We’ll just have to see what happens.
Social networking is really a marvel in and of itself. It lets you reach a large audience very quickly and, when used responsibly, can promote good ideas and encourage collaboration. Just like any tool though, I’m noticing more and more that it really can mess up your life. I keep finding stories of people doing stupid things and then updating their Facebook page to reflect that. That just doesn’t seem wise. Oh well, I guess as long as I’m not horribly stupid and not anxious to let the world know, I should be ok.
