Admission: I once was a facebook nah person. I was late to join and it was only the incessant nagging via facebook emails from friends that made me sign up. It  always came last after I checked my twitter and google reader feeds. I was a hard core flickr, gowalla, foursquare, wordpress, google reader user – even google wave and plus! I wasn’t going to switch. But then, it started to gain an edge. All my non geek friends and family were updating there instead of sending mails. They were posting photos of their life as it happened and checking in to locations. They were checking me in too. At some point, without me noticing, I was checking facebook first. I was updating my timeline and changing cover photos. I was discovering memes and news articles via somewhere other than google reader. I was liking businesses so that I could see what new menus or cocktails they had to offer. I even got access to pre-sales from airlines thanks to facebook. I had been told portals were dead, but here I was using one without realising. It makes sense to have all my photos, locations, thoughts and comments in one place rather than spread across the web and facebook is the one place making that easy.

When I started this blog at the end of 2003 I used to post links to fun things, musings on life and my travels. I barely ever make entries anymore and I put that primarily down to twitter and facebook. Google reader would have also been on that list, but once they castrated the sharing features it’s become less of a place for me to go to share content. Google says plus is the viable alternative, but I say when your content size on the screen is barely a third of what reader was, it’s no wonder I don’t want to go to plus to share. The other reason is plus’s lack of interoperability. There are no APIs to plus that allow developers to latch on to yet – like the awesome google reader for the ipad app Flipboard. They have a share to facebook and twitter, but the plus share is noticeably lacking. Google is very much losing their way and as a google lover this hurts me to say it.

I’ll still be updating this blog with my travels as well as stuff that needs a fair amount of words to say, but for day to day stuff you can find me on facebook and twitter. Just like everyone else.

 

Comments

comments

2 thoughts on “My current thoughts on social websites

  1. ChrisL says:

    I for one will not be assimilated.

    Down with the book. Shame on you girl!

    Reply
  2. Cedric Canard says:

    I can relate to what you’re saying there Amy. I never really got into FB but I must admit that I use it more now and quite enjoy it (even though no one can see my uploads due to some quirk I can’t work out). I can’t deny it’s a great way to stay in touch with friends and family OS. Beats emails which I rarely use now. I like gReader too (via Feedly) but only use it when I have nothing else to read. G+ was a real disappointment. Really wanted to like it but it’s even uglier than FB in terms of looks and a lot more noisy. Twitter is still the best for me but I can’t convince any family or friend in my age group to use it. They don’t get it 🙂

    Reply

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