Blue 2.0: Social Networking

MySpace

I created a MySpace profile: http://www.myspace.com/zemkat

In middle school, I brought a clipboard of paper to all of my classes. The back was a collage of pictures from movies that I'd cut out of magazines. Some of my classmates did similar things; I remember one girl had band-aids with various characters and designs on her clipboard. Without talking to people specifically, I could display my interests and start conversations with people with similar interests, and I could change what I had there by taping new pictures over the old. It seems to me that MySpace profiles are a more high tech version of that clipboard -- if I could have put music or video (or games or polls) on there, or had the content update when my favorite actor had a new movie coming out, I probably would have. If companies could have used the back of my clipboard to most favorably advertise their newest movies, they probably would have done that too.

There is also that "I have more friends than other people, see this big list of them?" aspect that many social networking sites have. In middle school, we did this with friendship bracelets (made with embroidery floss) or friendship pins (safety pins with colored beads that you wore on your shoelaces) -- the more you had, the more friends you had! Of course, many of us made additional pins and bracelets for ourselves. It's probably harder to justify making MySpace profiles for your imaginary friends, though I wouldn't doubt people do that too!

Overall, I'm not that fond of MySpace. Maybe I just haven't personalized it enough, but the ads pretty aggressively outshout the content. It's pretty rude to have an ad on such a page which is a link that says "1 New Message".


Facebook

I made a Facebook profile: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=625167466

Maybe it's just that Facebook is aimed at an older audience, but I pretty instantly found lots of friends from college on Facebook. It also seems that there is more of a focus on games to play with your friends and ways to find old and new friends. I have several games of Scrabulous going on at any particular time, and I keep hearing about this superhero game where you fight each other with your assigned super powers. MySpace seems to have more to watch than to do.

I don't typically do the "microblogging" that these sites allow; that is, letting people know at any given time what I'm doing. "Zemkat's in a meeting", "Zemkat's going to lunch!", "Zemkat's back from lunch". I set my Google Talk status to "watching a movie" several months ago, and never changed it. When I see people in real life now, they ask how the movie is, and if I'll be finished with it any time soon (because if it's that good, they'd like to borrow it).

Facebook seems to be a fine site -- the interface is clean and not covered with ads. I'm not sure that I like that every new application I install seems to get access to everything I do on Facebook, but I'm also not sure if such privacy is all that important to me. I do after all use a Kroger card and a Pet Perks card to save money at the store, and sometimes I get coupons in the mail for things that I actually buy. Maybe letting application developers know what sorts of things I like will lead to more things that I like. I know this is an invasion of my privacy, but I am not chilled by it. Kroger doesn't sell anything so embarrassing that I wouldn't buy it just because the Kroger people would know. Nor will I do anything that private on Facebook.


LinkedIn

I made a LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/7/a52/299

As a third social networking site, I made an account on LinkedIn. I chose this site because I received two invitations from colleagues. The first tempted me to join with a statement like, "if you join now, you will have access to Kopana's network of 2 people." How can I say no to that?

It seems to be a more professional networking site -- you don't just link to who you know and who you like, but who you have worked with and whose work you would recommend to others. There is built-in functionality for requesting letters of recommendation, for example. Seems interesting, though I currently only know a few people who use it. We'll see how my network grows.