Weaving my interweb

So I live a hyperlinked life. I'm on half a dozen social networking websites. I can't say that any of them have seriously enhanced my real-world social life. On the other hand, why not, really? It gives me a warm fuzzy when someone asks to be my friend, whether it's a long lost or a newly made friend. I can't help it, I feel a little pathetic when I find someone else and have to initiate the friend request. So I rarely do.


Friendster was first. The summer after I graduated I heard one of the Friendster founders on an interview on CNN saying she had 58,000 friends. I was terrified. But my three best friends from college got on and encouraged me to, also, so one slow day the next March I drew up a profile. The "degrees of separation" function is wildly surprising sometimes, and the "who's viewed your profile" function is a pretty amazing game for voyeurs to play. It's even prompted my lovelies in DC to coin a new phrase, "friendster stalking." It's at least as innocent as googling, so take that how you will. There's nothing that makes Friendster stand out, sometimes it's slow to load, but for all its shortcomings, I am still partial to it. It has all the people I love!

Myspace technically came next. I wanted to hear an mp3 available nowhere but the band's myspace page. I can't even remember what band. I had no picture and no friends (other than Tom) for more than a year. Then one person I actually know found me, and it's kinda gone up from there. Personally I think the site is clunky, clunky, clunky. Why can't they take you straight to the page you were heading for when they prompt you for a log in? Why can't they up their memory size for photos? But clearly there's some functionality that really makes sense, like mp3-hosting and the commenting function. Still, I don't tend this one, much to the chagrin of my friends with the pimped-out pages. Honestly I don't want to give the sketchy northern breed of redneck any more reason to send me freaky messages.

Facebook (must be in-network to view, or else befriend me). Oh Facebook. I resisted, I really did. Call it a generational difference. But if it was lame to be on one, it must be triply lame to be on three, right? Then my younger sister went and put the pictures from our cousin's wedding solely on her Facebook profile, so I had to join to see them. And the layout is so clean! The structure so closely reflects real-life socializing! with your ability to build high school network, then college network, then first job out of school, then grad school. So addictive with its updatable status and wall-to-wall messaging. Have to admit its beauty. News feed sux. Fin.

Niche sites
Last.fm I just love. Nothing makes a music geek jizz sooner than all her stats charted right there, immediately. You can see the making of the summer mix in the most frequently listened tracks. Oops. Next time I'll disable scrobbling. Neighbors, recommendations, radio, info, it's fantastic! If someone knows how to send my iPod tracks every time I connect that'd be cool. I have 1 friend. Hi, Will.

LibraryThing is supposed to catalogue the books you actually own. I used it to start cataloguing books I had read, whether or not I owned them, and haven't gone back to fix it. But really, I don't see any reason to discriminate against poor graduate students with disproportionate numbers of boring textbooks in their stashes and beloved stories returned to the school library or friends' shelves. A work in progress.

Flickr I do a lot more browsing than posting in Flickr.

YouTube where I registered for work, believe it or not. Don't befriend me. Seriously. I'm never going to post a video of my own and I don't see the point.

Linkity link link link. Delectable.