Observation about social networking:

[drcuriosity]

Real names are the new aliases.

In amongst trying to map various of my friends online presences to/from their actual names, I just discovered that someone who I'd seen around LJ for ages and finally got around to enfriending recently is, in fact, someone I first ran into on a mailing list back in 2001. D'oh!

15 hours in, we have 28 for Facebook and 9 for MySpace. Other observations:

* I don't like the way Facebook hides what some links are doing with <a onclick=""/> events. I know it's very "Web 2.0", but in a new system where I'm not sure whether the links I'm clicking on are from Facebook itself or from third-party applications, it's still uncool not to have that affordance. (Granted, it was probably more of a problem because I noticed it on the first couple of links I tried to look at - looking further afield it doesn't seem to be as common as I initially thought.)

* It's certainly less bloated and ugly than MySpace, which both aesthetically and functionally seems to be held together with duct tape and fuse wire from the year 2002. (Man, I haven't seen another ColdFusion fusebox application in years. It's almost quaint.)

* It still feels odd to be talking about stuff from the start of the 21^st Century as old :-)

Right, now time for more allergy/head cold medication, and back to work.

Comments

[drcuriosity]

I hear that they're even more difficult to remove yourself from than they are to join in the first place.

[adrexia.livejournal.com]

Yep, and like cellphones,once you have one you forget how you did things before you had one. Facebook has very few uses, but it is quite good at the things it _is_ useful for (organising events, micro-blogging, and bugging your friends and co-workers). Just forget about most of the apps though... and don't be one of those people who sends every app on to all their friends. We hate those people. ;)

[drcuriosity]

One of the first things I put in my profile:
Also, if you try to send me random crap from "send this to [x] of your friends"-style Facebook apps, I am liable to smack you.

:-)

[adrexia.livejournal.com]

Good good. Just making sure. It's amazing how many of the people you otherwise like turn out to be app pushers.

[nightwlf.livejournal.com]

hmm just try and avoid getting a bebo.. *shudder* though i have one lol. hmm i got a twitter too, and a facebook app which updates my facebook status from looking at my twitter feed, so i can update my facebook status via text message. which was awesome, until facebook just gave people the option to update via text message, and i was kinda bummed out. not that i like.. ever update anything anywhere anymore anyway. that was a lot of anys. i should update them all sometime soon.

have fun at work!

[drcuriosity]

Bebo? Ugh. Definitely not touching that one.

Work is game development fun. The tricky part is keeping my brain on task when it wants to be curled up in bed.

[nightwlf.livejournal.com]

hey, that reminds me, i saw this and thought of you;

levelHead

[drcuriosity]

Nifty. Thanks for the heads-up :-)

[adrexia.livejournal.com]

Yet you touched Myspace...?

I have* Bebo for family reasons. My younger siblings seem to use the site. It seems to be very much targeted at the teenage crowd, so I usually only visit it once a month to see how much my little sister and her boyfriend love each other (seriously, that's all they seem to talk about ;) ).

---
* Well, that's why I keep it. I have it because I was so sick of the sign-up spam that I signed up and forgot about it for a year.

[drcuriosity]

I have MySpace for fiancee reasons.

[drcuriosity]

What happen!!

[(Anonymous)]

There are plenty of ColdFusion/CFML Fusebox apps out there. Many behind firewalls and many in public. MySpace was actually using a bastardized version of FB3. A notable large site that uses Fusebox currently is UFCs website. Kinda cool to see random comments about the framework floating around out there though :)

[drcuriosity]

Are you someone I know at all? Interesting comment, all the same. I guess I just haven't done anything with ColdFusion since San Francisco, and that was a whole bunch of years ago.

[anarchangel23.livejournal.com]

What's do 28 and 9 represent?

[drcuriosity]

Adding requests from various people on LJ who also have MySpace or Facebook. Now 33 and 10, respectively.

[graeco-celt.livejournal.com]

Heh.
Well, if it makes you feel better, I spent quite some time thinking your two names referred to two different people, a few years ago. :D

That's the problem with only being on the fringe of a group and never quite caring enough to make the effort to fully integrate. ;D

And now I am off to up your Facebook statistics (but not MySpace because it is crap and I wouldn't join up, even if I had a use for it).

[drcuriosity]

I probably wouldn't have joined MySpace if not for the encouragement of my fiancee, who posts stuff there occasionally.

There's apparently a few people who hadn't figured out I had a real name for a while, heh.

[leinahtane.livejournal.com]

Well, if you havent noticed I use Leinahtane or Drakona everywhere I am. Facebook, myspace, lj and nothing else im aware of yet.

anywho, both are my names. Reverse Leinahtane and drop the E, you get my real name. and Drakona is 1st part of my Pagan name Drakona Shijtan Wolvenmoon :)

is does that count? if so, add a mark to each of your counts :-D

that is if you hadnt already noticed and/or your darling fiance already told you :-D

[drcuriosity]

I figured out the reversal, because I'm clever like that :-) The other one I didn't know. Nifty :-)

[theuns.livejournal.com]

I've already posted what I have to say about Facebook in posted messages on there... 8) Suffice it to say that having a profile under your control is no bad thing.

[specialknives.livejournal.com]

Facebook I have no issue with, myspace and Bebo I think are 700 different types of shitty, but I have both for business and family reasons respectively.

[specialknives.livejournal.com]

Oh, I never had a problem removing myself from Facebook or Myspace - I've done both in the past. OTOH oldfriends.co.nz, at the time I was using it, had no "remove me" feature - the only way to do it was to email the site owners. But to their credit they did it quickly and completely.