Initially I was thoroughly enthused with social networks like myspace and facebook. I added friends, left comments, described how I awesome I am, reconnected with people, and of course looked at pictures of people trying to out awesome me.
It was great. I was by no means the king of myspace or facebook, but Ben Koo was a man of the people, adored and respected by hundreds of close friends, classmates, random acquaintances, and former colleagues from Chippendales.
Then it suddenly went all down hill. My first employer after college (Etrade) did not share my enthusiasm for social networking as exhibited by their restrictive internet network which blocked both facebook and myspace in addition to everything else where business efficiency goes to die.
Luckily I moved on from Etrade but it didn’t help. My current employer does not literally block these site , but oddly I find myself prohibited in dabbling in the art of procastination and e-schmoozing due to a steady diet of too much work.
I would love to read so and so’s 100th survey bulletin of 2008, look at pictures of someone’s new apartment, and perhaps say some deragatory comments to the friends I miss most. If only one could get paid for being the prom king of myspace or facebook.
But what bothers me most besides not having the time, is the actual direction of both these social networking platforms. I initially thought when Fox purchased myspace in 2005, that the website would a) run better b) restrict shady myspacers c) get a better user interface
Regardless of connection speed, processor, or browser, myspace continues to befuddle computers of all types. Browsers consistently lock up for long stretches of time as pictures and music struggle to render in what I suspect is some very shotty HTML code and underlying architecture.
Myspace continues to struggle with a variety of illegilimate accounts promoting sex, gambling, and bands that are just god awful. Although page layouts are readily available, the internal interface to update your settings are still pretty dated compared to other similar networks
Moving on to facebook, I have to admit there are a lot of things that I still enjoy about facebook in terms of usability and functionality. However the inundation of third party extensions and more specifically third party extentsions requests have saddled bagged my enjoyment of facebook. I am all for third party extensions as my employer promotes two website devoted to this concept for our own software, but every day I survey the new influx of odd requests and contemplate the pros and cons of adding an extension.
Don’t get me wrong, some of the extensions are pretty cool (list of 10 most installed extensions, ) but most of them are just all fluff. I don’t need extensions like the Karma, Hotness, Groupies, Speed Racer, Secret Lover-Love Notes, and Booze mail extensions.
But I am 100% in the school of thought that if you don’t like it, change the channel, look away, etc. However facebook extensions invitations have reached critical mass with usually 2-4 invitations being sent to me daily. Not only are the request frequent but they are extremely random. People I don’t really know, haven’t seen in ages, or even co workers feel the need to spread the joy that is “The Friends For Sale Extension” .
Essentially I like the idea of extra functionality on my facebook, but the onslaught of these extensions has turned into a spamming turf war for my facebook page. With my facebook time devoted to ridiculing my friends, hollering at babes, and keeping risque comments off my profile, I find myself annoyed with the continuous flow of invitations to add very niche specific extensions to an already solid product.
I’ll continue to utilize both myspace and facebook as sadly for many old friends its the only form of communication remaining. However I think it would be nice to see both platforms evolve and grow along with their Generation Y target market who are hitting the work force and are shifting their online social networking preferences.
Thats it for now. Maybe if you send me a “Grumpy Ranting Old Man” extension, I will just have to make an exception.
