Google+ has some neat ideas and overall I like the look and functionality more than Facebook. As a bonus there are no stupid games to block, at least not yet.
But like most social networking sites I find after setting up an account it quickly goes fallow/gathers cobwebs or whatever metaphor works best for you.
But here it is, my Google+ profile. It is also conveniently linked along with all my other never-used profiles over to the right under My Links.
Scott Jennings has some interesting thoughts on social networking on his blog Broken Toys. You can read the entry here. The included quote he references is especially worthy. Sites like Facebook allow people to share every mundane event in their lives — and furnishes them the ability to create many more — but does so without the context that comes from everyday conversation that occurs face-to-face, so you are left with a jumble of random updates that don’t resonate or particularly inform. And yet some people post these non-essential bits of personal errata to the point where they wonder if they are becoming addicted to it. (I also realize the irony of talking about all of this on a personal blog.)
When I think about why I post the occasional update to a site like Facebook — which I clearly have a tepid like/hate relationship with — it basically comes down to one thing: attention whoring. I know there is a built-in audience of at least 29 people (my Friends list) and that others via proxy will also see my updates. Everything that’s posted is done in easily-digested chunks. There is no need nor even desire for in-depth discussion. In fact, discussion just gets in the way — it bogs things down and clutters up the page for the next update about not much of anything.
When I write a post here, it is either as a journal entry to myself — the jogging updates, for example — or because I want to muse on a particular subject or experience. Occasionally I post something that fits the Facebook criteria but that occurs less often. And on this blog, I do all of this with the knowledge that the audience is minuscule or accidental. The only time people are likely to see a post here is when I specifically link to it elsewhere. But here I can provide context, I can expand and ruminate. It doesn’t seem so much like attention whoring as genuinely sharing ideas and thoughts. How worthy those thoughts and ideas are is, of course, open to debate.
If I Like R.E.M. on Facebook, it’s a piece of trivia that is irrelevant to people in a general sense, if I write about R.E.M. here it will be something like my recent review of Accelerate that attempts to convey information or opinion with a smidgen of substance behind it.
Ultimately I don’t object to social networking because I can’t articulate why sharing a bunch of random trivia, photos, links and simplistic musings is a terribly bad thing. It just seems unnecessary.
