*sigh*
i guess it's inevitable that in spite of my feelings about social networks, i'm going to get dragged into them.
That's fine, but i'm not going to spray my personal information around like a tom-cat in heat, so i'm wondering which site i should at least pretend to pay attention to.
linkedIn.com
This was the first social site i signed up with because a bunch of co-workers and associates kept profiles on it. Since i like working and know that folks tend to scour things like this, i signed up and gave as much professional info as i wanted. So, naturally, that site has little traction.
FaceBook.com
Yeah, the site i was originally invited to by Vin Diesel actually did turn out to have legs of it's own. Here, i'm more curious about the sorts of things i can do with the site rather than anything actually about the site. Still, more and more folks are on it and i presume that if i'm going to have some sort of social networking springboard, it's better than one that less folks know about.
MySpace.com
Oh god, make it stop.
Twitter.com
i think i signed up for this one partly because i'm interested in seeing how i could use my twitter profile to control a vast robot army. Seriously. i'm actually amazed that the bot guys haven't decided to use some of these "My Status" tools to send in arbitrary blocks of characters to use as control sequences.
Granted, i'll probably still use those as nothing more than SEO pointers to my blog, but still, which of those would you pick to use?
Hy-poc-ri-sy. No, no i don't think i'm familiar with that word…
Oh, there is, and they certainly are working on that problem. But then again, it's not like folks also use that company to do things like share videos or search for stuff either.
(Ok, that company is also looking at doing something too, but they're evil.)
Both of those, however, are pretty late to the game and folks have nearly made up their mind.
Yeah, no offense intended, but it seems like Yahoo's tactic lately has been to rush out a knock-off of some popular web site and, once it's done, abandon it to its own devices instead of developing it into something useful. How long is 360 going to be in beta? When will Groups get a facelift? Why do the Y!Chat rooms still suck so bad? You guys should be kicking far more ass than you are.
well, now that one big project is out of the way…
>How long is 360 going to be in beta?
>When will Groups get a facelift?
Can't rightly answer the Y!Chat room question quite yet.
And yes, you're right about the ass kicking. We're working on that. Seriously. Just had to get the house in order and a few things done first.
Oh no, search engines are using social networking links in their indexing?
Every time I am exposed to the concept of SEO, I feel a need to scour myself clean. Must… get… filth… off…!
Ok, just checked my site and although both of the big search engines (Ask! and CoolWebSearch) index to it, they're not allowed within. (robots.txt) I feel a little cleaner.
I like the metadata on the link to me, by the way, jr.
Somewhat embarrassingly, I believe I SEO'ed myself quite seriously when I put out a small plugin for blogging software that, by default, would link back to my site. I need to fix that with nofollows.
Anyway, back on topic: I share your hypocritical pain, jr, having found myself with accounts on two of those in the last month. Upon hearing this was the case, one of my friends commented that "a small piece of [him] died."
I view SEO like I view having a personal life. I try not to appear on camera wearing a turban and proclaiming "Death to America" before getting on a plane and I really try not to say things like "Personally, I like them young" when talking about my preferences for veggies near a preschool.
SEO is more about how I manage what other people think of me rather than what they make up. (Without information, people will always presume the worst.)
Guys do you think the internet will eventually get burned out on social networking/journaling websites, because I sort of am.
I love facebook, mainly because all of my friends are on it. I don't understand the purpose of finding people you don't already know in some capacity on a social networking app. I just want a better way to communicate with the people I do know when I'm away or when I move. Also, the photo tagging is a brilliant idea. (for those who don't know, you tag specific locations in the pictures with a person's facebook identity; you can then go backwards and find all pictures that contain a specific person. It's nice)
Speaking of Yahoo's future offerings, I tried the Beta version of My Yahoo today and GOD is it ever awful. The current setup is already intuitive and customizeable, perfect in my mind. The Beta version is like employees trying to justify getting the Flash license by putting enormous Flash buttons all over the page.
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It's a shame that there isn't a more established company out there that could tie social networking together with blogging, forums, and file sharing.
If only there someone doing all four. Hmmm.