Social Insanity

I have to give credit where credit is due, I was thinking it, Keeping Up Appearance beat me to the punch and wrote about it.

While I was driving around the parking lot (not in circles) at Steelyard Commons after visiting my friendly neighborhood Wal-Mart, I started to think how infrequently I use myspace anymore. Yeah, I already wrote about myspace vs. facebook but this social networking stuff is getting out of hands.

Right now I have:
myspace – I started somewhat for my job then it blossomed into a crazy addiction
facebook – I started because just one of my friends had it, now I have more than 100 friends
plaxo – I started because just one of my friends had it, I can’t tell you the last time I logged on.
linkedin – I started it because I thought it was the professional myspace. I still don’t get its use.
vox – I started it because just one of my friends had it and to comment on a blog.
yahoo360 – I don’t even know if it exists anymore, I don’t even know if I have a page.
twitter – I can’t update my myspace, facebook and twitter status at the same time. People apparently want to know what I’m doing, like “hey, I’m going to Steelyard.”

Of course, there’s my very own social networking site, www.taawd.com. I love my blog and don’t plan on giving it up. Thanks for your readership and your comments. They always make me smile.

I read text messages and get e-mail instantly on my phone. Oh and let’s not forget the fact, I actually have a cell phone so you can CALL me.

I have a Yahoo! e-mail account and always will unless they start charging or shutdown.

I have two gmail accounts. I have a hotmail account that’s surely dead now because I never use it. It always had too much spam for me.

Oh and let’s not forget my work e-mail or phone.

I’ll be using myspace less and less because everyone seems to have migrated to facebook. I think myspace got on the widget bandwagon too late. Now they’re offering putting applications on your page but everyone already has their facebook account set up already.

Facebook has become myspace on steriods and seems to be so much more accepted. One of my co-workers told me this morning he was actually thinking about signing up. I’d never expected it of him to say such a thing.

So, if you really want to get in touch with me, I’ve opened up some of the options, it’s only that now, I’m thinking about closing some of them down,

Whew!

MySpace vs. Facebook

It appears to me people are abandoning MySpace.com in droves and heading to facebook.com. I have accounts on both. I was a big MySpacer for a time until I got just downright bored with it.

I only started a facebook account because one of my friends was so anti-MySpace. Now, I’m getting college friends (many of them I haven’t talked with for some 15 years). My pageviews on myspace would increase by 50 a day. Now, they hardly notch up that much during a week or a month. Is it that I’m less interesting? Hardly! I just think everyone else is getting tired of what MySpace has to offer as opposed to facebook.

I think people now equate MySpace with tweens and teens. It seems the adults (I’m not sure if I’m one of them yet) prefer facebook. I do like the fact you can customize MySpace but you can’t do the same thing with facebook. I’m up to 85 friends and I don’t even try to expand my list like I once did with MySpace.

When you are out and about, you’ll hear more people talking facebook than MySpace it seems. I can’t believe some of my friends are on facebook. Of course, some of them are strongly encouraged to do so.

Is myspace on the way out?

(yes, I should be sleeping, but for some reason I can’t…)

Teresa Takes On MySpace

I’ve always loved Teresa Strasser. She’s a great TV host and she’s an even better columnist, plus, she’s cute and cute=hot. So, what does she have to say about the phenomenon? Take a look at her LA Times column from earlier this year. You can check out more of her writings at www.teresastrasser.com.


So, MySpace or yours?
By Teresa Strasser
Originally printed in the LA Times – February 15, 2007

I thought of MySpace as a storm that would pass. If I didn’t panic, it would blow by like Hurricane Friendster and I would never get hit. I would never have to come up with an ironic yet welcoming “headline,” or decide who would make my “Top 8.”

The whole thing seemed like a juvenile fiasco that was tossing my girlfriends asunder and causing them to regress emotionally. If I could wait it out, it would pass and I could avoid pillaging Ferlinghetti for quotes on embracing life.

MySpace just seemed undignified for those over 29… which I’m not, if you go by my resume. Just don’t check my license.The point is, I knew if I could clutch my disdain, I wouldn’t be forced to cobble together a list of “Favorites” that would appeal to my target demographic: Bono, Bukowski, “The Big Lebowski.”

Too bad I caved. A month after posting my profile, I went out on my first MySpace date. It was my first Internet date ever. This is not a fact to be glossed over in today’s world of JDate weddings and Match.com babies.

I’ve been a singles columnist since Sarah Jessica Parker was a Square Peg, and while I would recommend online dating to anyone who asked, I had avoided it completely. It’s like giving blood. I know it’s the right thing to do, but when the van is out front and it’s blood drive time, I’d rather you took the needle, doughnut and karma points while I congratulate you on your bravery.

After a few exchanges of solid prose on his part (possibly recycled, there was the faint whiff of a cut and paste job), I told MySpace Man to meet me at the Smog Cutter, a dive bar so decrepit even Bukowski might find the alley a finer place to drink.

The guy was fine to look at, no better or worse than his photo. I sipped a few (five) Jamesons, decided he was my soul mate after talking four hours at the bar and became so moved by a pool shark dedicating a karaoke version of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” to us that I jokingly asked if he wanted to go to Vegas and get married. He didn’t flinch. Next thing I knew, we were flying from the Smog Cutter to Sin City. We got as far as Ontario before I had second thoughts (sobered up).

This would be a great story if not for our second date, so soul-crushingly boring and awkward I haven’t seen him since. Perhaps we were feeling thrown, confused and vulnerable about our almost wedding, though it was never consummated (I’m stupid, but not easy). While looking generally listless over dinner, he mumbled, “I may need therapy. I only want to pursue girls. When I catch them, I lose interest.”I can fake liking Bono, but there’s no way I can
pretend not to know that a man doesn’t lie about a thing like that.

Fast sex with strangers is fine if that’s what you like, but that’s not on my “Favorites,” nor is running from a guy just because he likes the chase. Men are men, from online, to in line at the grocery store. It’s a story as old as networking sites are new. It’s not like I don’t have my part. Perhaps I should reconsider my whiskey to date ratio before I turn into some boozy, old cougar.

Sure, I’m tempted to check his comments page to divine the reason it all went wrong, but I won’t.I may be new to MySpace, but I know when to give a guy the one thing he needs at a time like this: His Space.