Oh, social networking. Socnet. The buzzconcept du moment, is it not? I was not exactly sold on this until relatively recently despite the fact that one of my biggest fascinations with technology is and always has been the way it facilitates communication between people.
Well, I'm coming around. As I posted a while back, I'm beginning to really appreciate FaceBook. It's shown me more useful applications by far than MySpace or Friendster ever did. It's the American version of Japan's Mixi that I'd been waiting for. I hardly ever get spam from random people I don't know wanting to be my friend (what's up with that?) but I do get stuff of interest to me. I recently found out about a telesummit for women in technology through FaceBook and was able to link up with fellow participants of that group through Twitter, for example. And a fellow JET alum happened to post a New York Times article on trends in Japanese education which I'd read, so I started a conversation with him and another alum about that based on our previous experience as Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs) working in the Japanese education system.
In these ways I've come to see the utility of FaceBook and that's to a large degree why I'm becoming a fan. I have practical as well as personal reasons to use it.
And get this: my enthusiasm got me interviewed by the Wall Street Journal today. W00t! It was because I'd been such an active user of TripAdvisor's Local Picks application, reviewing NYC restaurants left and right, that I apparently drew the attention of someone from TripAdvisor who'd been contacted by the WSJ about setting up an interview with a user. The journalist and I talked not just about Local Picks but about FaceBook in general: FaceBook versus other social networking sites, why FaceBook is useful, and especially how I'm linking up with other people through applications on FaceBook. I mentioned how FaceBook is unique in that it merges my personal and professional networks. Never did that with Friendster or MySpace and LinkedIn, while useful for professional networking, is still a bit staid. FaceBook's a whole new ball game.
Anyway, tonight I ended up exploring some nonprofit techie and progressive political groups on FaceBook while chatting with some fellow techies on Twitter (Guy Kawasaki started following me yesterday -- woo! Me and 3,000 other people, but still -- he's the Mac Evangelist so I'm pretty psyched) when it occurred to me that I might want to go a little old school and see what was happening on my very first social networking site (if you think of it in a loose sense), LambdaMOO.
LambdaMOO's not Web 2.0, it's not even Web-anything. It's a telnet session -- no GUI here -- and you have to specify the TCP port because it doesn't answer at 23. I've been on there for 14 years now, since I was in high school, and I still chat with friends there once in a blue moon. When I logged in tonight I found a friend I'd met lo those 14 years ago and got an automatic virtual text hug from him as a greeting. Little script activates whenever it finds a friends of his logging in, I think. So I paged him and briefly caught up with how he's doing, remembering how we first connected on the basis of our shared interest in francophone culture (him as a professor and enthusiast of Cajun culture, me as a Franco-American). We both had French names on the MOO and that was how we found each other if I recall. Simple as that.
Social networking is far more sophisticated now. Finding people is almost too easy to the point of being a little uncomfortable. Privacy is becoming a thing of a past along with these avatars and virtual identities people used to love cultivating on LambdaMOO. And aggregating things, bringing them together under one neat and tidy umbrella, is becoming oh so convenient with mini social universes such as FaceBook, which I saw someone ominously describe this week as "All Your Bits Are Belong to Us." Hard to tell what's coming down the pike but for now I think I'm going to keep all my options open.
Despite the fact that I bemoan the ever growing number of methods in which people can get in touch with me (email, phone, text message, IM, snail mail, Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, comments on this here blog, FTF, and the list goes on... there goes my iPhone bleeping with an incoming text as someone pages me on LambdaMOO and another person messages me on Twitter while I write this) I still do like being reachable in all these different ways. I guess they can cohabit for the time being. But between you, me and the blogosphere, I wonder how many people on this hot app Twitter have ever heard of LambdaMOO. I have an inkling of how many on FaceBook have heard of it because there's a group for it there, but still... out of the general online population? I suspect we're a a dwindling group of old net fogies.
One of my friends on LambdaMOO just alerted me to the fact that my page echo message says "Rosie seems to be absorbed with her Power Mac." Oh boy. That is dating it waaay back.
Anybody remember Usenet? IRC? Yeesh. I'm going to go check for white hairs now.
how about the big upgrade--from 300 baud to 2400 baud?
Posted by: Bru | August 04, 2008 at 08:54 AM
I for one cannot protest the recent M.T.A. fare hike and the
accompanying promises that this would in no way improve service. For
the transit system, as it now operates, has hidden advantages that
can't be measured in monetary terms.
Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to
have that unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything: "I came
by subway." Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot
should someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly
understand his long delay.
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http://ebloggy.com/normandratliffoy
Posted by: Surgetutfig | May 11, 2008 at 12:14 AM
Well hey now! I hadn't even reached that far back... I was a BBS'er before MOOing it up, actually. What'd you do on your BBS? That *is* Old Skool... ;)
Posted by: eladyland | January 07, 2008 at 11:21 PM
No LambdaMOO for me, but I did log on to quite a few BBSes back in the day.
Old Skool, indeed. :-]
Posted by: jon deal | January 07, 2008 at 06:11 PM