You might recall me viciously putting down Facebook, Twitter and others in an earlier post. In a delicious twist of irony, I am using all of those services now on a fairly regular and beneficial basis. In fact, I'm on MORE social networks then I was 2 years ago. Let us approach these posts and see where I was right and where I was so wrong.
Myspace
I was right about this. Myspace is dying. Slowly but surely enough. They are trying to rebrand themselves as a music site and this might work out for them. A huge number of huge artists at the moment got their start in myspace.
Facebook
Facebook is an essential service to me. My entire friends circle is on Facebook and everything is done through here. There is no more 'calling someone up for a night out'. Someone sends out the invite, people accept and rock up. Photos don't have to be shared via USB or CDs, they just all go onto FB photos*. You are intimately aware of what is happening in some of your friends' lives and commenting is rife. Some of those comments deservedly end up on FailBooking. I mentioned before that Facebook is a 'friend grab' in that people friend everyone they meet to increase their numbers. Whilst this does still happen, I believe most people actually leverage Facebook to build deeper relationships with those people they run into once or twice. I know I've helped people who I've met once, but subsequently kept in regular contact with on FB.
I was spot on in terms of the privacy problems I mentioned, but in Facebook's defense, they've also introduced a number of measures to give people at least the illusion of privacy (though not before violating it a few times...Beacon anyone?).
Linked In
Linked-In's benefit is actually very real at least in the IT sphere. I've had quite a number of IT recruiters contact me through Linked-In and I've published most of my information using the hResume style profiles they have on LinkedIn. In fact I'm going to bet in the future, Word CVs will become a thing of the past and people will forward the link to their Linked-In public profile.I've yet to use much of the capabilities of Linked-In for doing such things as using relationships to get through to particular companies, but in the coming weeks, who knows!
Twitter
Twitter has very much morphed into something wonderful though, it really does depend on who you are 'Following'. There are amazing professionals who post intriguing articles to read, service professionals who tell you when services crash and come back up and those crazy friends who always end up partying and want you to come along. I think the advent of TwitPic, geotagging and the 3rd party APIs raised Twitter from Yet Another Social Media tool to being an integral part of the modern technorati and even normal citizens.
Now that is just the four I was slagging off previously. Hell, I'm now on Google Buzz, Google Reader, Youtube channels, Vimeo, Orkut, Bioware Social Network, the Steam Community in one fashion or another. There is more data being thrown at me then ever before and I think the key to survival is know what you want. There isn't enough time to look at everything in detail. There really is barely time to even give a cursory glance to everything.
I'll revise my previous message and say that Social Media is what you make of it. It can be a waste of time, a way to lose your privacy** and a way to ostracize yourself from the real world. Or it can be a way to learn from your trusted circle, a way to let people know how awesome you are and a chance to build meaningful relationships with those you might not be able to meet easily.
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* This does irk me since FB uses terrible compression and most photos look terrible. That said, most photos are myspace-style photos taken at parties which looked mediocre to begin with.
** Or it can be REALLY evil: Check the following two sites out which are plain privacy violation central!Geotagging when you just had sex: http://www.ijustmadelove.com/Knowing when a user is out of home: http://www.pleaserobme.com/
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