To be quite honest, I’ve never liked delicious very much, instead I prefer the link directory in my own website. I don’t use Flickr in any serious manner, never have, and I just post my photos in my own little private self built online photo gallery. I find Twitter quite useless, and I have an official dislike for MySpace and similar services. I guess one of my major issues is that I don’t like to sign up for 292384 different services, and have 292384 different profile pages, and 292384 accounts, to do 292384 different tasks for me [and often even repetitious tasks!]. I find that my friends and family, as well as all other people that I know and care about, tend to find it quite comfortable to just go to my website, read my blog, have a look at my new links, news, pictures and everything else as it’s all in one place. I get the feeling that I’m not a fan of disconnected / decentralized / all over the place data, which is one major reason why I like the whole set of ideas behind DataPortability [hence the “I Support” logo].
Of course I have a Facebook account which I was pretty much forced into signing up for, given that some folks I know only keep in touch that way. But well, I only log into it every once in a blue moon. I have a passionate dislike for what they do [or don’t… when it comes to things like Google Friend Connect] with your personal info [yeah… “those”].
In general there are a lot of things that I don’t like about current social networking websites. The constant competition among users to add to their popularity scores by going around and randomly adding people they don’t know, have no interest in ever getting to know and have no common interests with, bothers me. Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy it very much when somebody adds me to their network because of… well… “something”, anything other than being just another face in the list. I enjoy getting to know people who like to share something with me very much. But I’m sick and tired of constantly receiving add requests from people who don’t even read my profile before pressing the “add” button. What royally boils my noodles though, are the people who send you rude messages if you don’t accept their add request. Fancy that! There’s also the spam, the chain messages, the conspiracies and cyber bullying that result in people committing suicide and tons of other annoyances. Interestingly enough, yesterday I came across this article that summarizes the best of what bothers me. So instead of writing it all down again, I just direct you to the article.
So, with all of the above reasons, the only social networking capable websites that I seriously use, are the very few very special ones that I find worth it. If you Google my nickname [Aasemoon] you’ll see that I’ve given a try to almost everything that’s out there, including some very recent social networking / bookmarking websites like Zigtag, Mento and Myrl, but out of all of that, here’s what I actually use:
Shelfari – Although I have had my share of disappointments with it, as I receive too many really annoying spammy messages in there, and therefore I have cut out of all social networking capabilities of the website and I’m just using the shelf [and for that, it’s the best].
last.fm – I love this one… just love it… absolutely nothing else like it for the purpose.
And of course, the most recent addition is twine. This one has impressed the heavens out of me so far. =) I didn’t just come across twine. I was Googling for something with the capabilities that twine has, and that’s how I found out about it and eventually joined the beta. So far, I love it. I have to confess, my approach to twine has been a very self centred one. Ever since I joined the beta I’ve been mainly playing with different features trying to find out exactly what twine can be for me. I also have to mention that sometimes I have a way of using tools in ways that I find beneficial for me, even if how I use that tool isn’t exactly the intended purpose of the tool [as long as I don’t bother anyone else, that is!]. So that’s exactly what I’ve been doing with twine, and here’s the result: I’m now using twine as my ultimate social bookmarking tool, my 1 line blog, my image blog, my twitter, my interest profiling tool and a whole load of other things, and in time I’m sure I’ll find more uses.
I have created a few twines related to my interests where I and other interested people post relevant links, pictures and all sort of data. That’s very cool because I get a chance to have a look at what other people with similar interests are looking into, and I’ve ended up learning a lot that way. I’ve also created a public personal twine, where again I and others post all sorts of things… anything that any of the members of the twine might find cool. That’s also where I post images, thoughts, notes…. it’s very multi purpose. I also have a personal personal twine, that only I can see or post stuff to, and I mainly use it for testing twine related stuff or collecting articles to read later.
Another thing I like about twine is how alive it seems to be. I constantly see changes, improvements, new features and new ideas. I guess a large part of that has to do with the fact that the developers of twine are very open to suggestions from users. I know that there’s a lot more that needs to be done before twine goes public, a lot that the users and developers want to have before they can call it ready. But even as it is right now… I’m really enjoying it, and honestly I’m a little surprised with a few articles I’ve read here and there on the web talking about people’s disappointments with using twine. Hey, it’s beta after all… come on! I’m only hoping that the day twine goes public, the spam protection capabilities will be fully “there”. Other than that… I just want it to go public so that I can show off with my twines. =D 😉