Too many!

[dagibbs]

Google+, Facebook, LiveJournal, DreamWidth. (Linked In.)

There are too many social networks, too many places people can/will post things. I liked it when I could follow all the stuff that mattered in my networks in one place.

Am I just a Luddite?

(Maybe I can hope that something will die off?)

Comments

[ladysprite.livejournal.com]

You are not a luddite at all; I am utterly in agreement with you.

I don't see the need for half a dozen different sites, to be in touch with the same people and post more or less the same information. And I'll be completely honest; LJ is still my favorite. I'm not a huge bandwagon-jumper, and I know I tend to be a bit set in my ways, but that's just me....

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

LJ is still my favourite, too. It is the one I keep up on completely, read all the back posts I miss, etc.

[moonlessnights.livejournal.com]

The problem is the lack of distributed data aggregation. Back before social networking became the big thing to do, we seemed to be heading there (back when RSS was being taken seriously as the next big thing). Now, however, the heavy-weights in the industry have realized that the best way to ensure their future profitability is to build their systems into walled gardens, destroy all possibility of interoperability, and treat their users like cattle.

Unfortunately, the success of Facebook seems to imply that this business model and philosophy work very well. It says horribly insulting things about humans, I find.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

Yeah, RSS did look hopeful -- but sadly doesn't seem to cover enough branches anymore.

[roseknospe.livejournal.com]

I agree with you completely. Livejournal is a favorite of mine, and the only one I use. I choose to use this due to higher privacy, lack of over information about very menial things,and it allows me to engage in more real conversations through IM and while I am out socializing, because I don't know every single detail of everyone's life constantly. I am also slightly more productive and spend less time online. I have been much happier deleting my Facebook account and will not look back, despite some minor annoyances with people objectifying and overusing Facebook. It creates a huge problem because that objectification allows people to not use real email and IM systems, making real( and reliable,due to constant Facebook glitches) communication a problem,especially party invites ( outgoing and incoming) when one does not use that system.

I made a google+ account out of curiosity, and Dabblerblue's suggestion, and despite a few adds I got, I refuse to use it. Livejournal allows more depth for thoughts and conversations, and the people I have on here are actually people I care for and I am willing to read long entries about. I find with facebook,you get so many people on there, and so many people that you don't know that well, or matter, and they have too much access too to much information. It also gets hard to keep tabs on everyone.Their info just takes up space. I wish more people used Livejournal. A huge complaint when getting people to join is that 'not many people are on here'. That really bothers me because there ARE people they care for on here, and if they use it consistently, other people will want to join Livejournal because more people are on here. It's a very easy solution to that problem but no one see's it.It's really frustrating.

People seem to favor the ' numbers game' and ' constant reassurance and proof of popularity. Which is really sad when you take pictures at parties, and the first thing anyone wants to do or thinks of, is to put it on Facebook, so people you don't know can see what your doing at parties, and so they can show how much fun they have, and how popular they are. The same with the 37846736748 gratuitous Facebook profile pictures where someone just takes a bunch of pictures of themselves not really doing anything, to show that they are hot and social. Also the add everyone you know, even if you don't like them, have met them once, or knew them years ago, just so you can have 19909 friends on Facebook. URGH.I find it really demeans real friendships, it makes going out and going to events less exciting because you are flooded with invite to so many things AND you have the ability to say maybe to birthday parties and events with no face to face repercussions ( your friend being hurt) to everything..... oh god, I can go on and on about the damages Facebook does socially, but I should stop here. SO FRUSTRATING.

[roseknospe.livejournal.com]

"(Maybe I can hope that something will die off?)"

A simple solution for that is to stop using some of those systems.

The sooner people realize they have the power to do that, and that you can have a life without Facebook, Twitter, or whatever the fuck you use out of the 50 things out there, the sooner a lot of those things will die off.

There are many big fears to quitting Facebook, you actually have to go out of your way to talk to people and see what is going on with them and to know what is going on in terms of events. ( Oh no, real socializing, just like the days before Facebook!!!)
The more people realize its feasible,and that they won't become unpopular recluses, and that life goes on, the easier it is for more people to get back to reality. Good luck to you. I am glad you are one for Livejournal, I do indeed enjoy reading your posts.

[katfeete.livejournal.com]

A song for you, sir. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L2eOdclF0U&feature=youtube_gdata_player)

I got on LJ because Dan was on it, and I wanted to read his locked posts. I got on Twitter because a bunch of my fellow comickers were on it. I got on Facebook because my parents needed a page for the business and bullied me mercilessly until I made them one. ("He'll, no, we're not getting an account on that thing! Why do you think we HAD children?")

I need to stop talking to people.

[kd5mdk.livejournal.com]

Federation would be nice. Adium for social media.

I do admit to finding Google+ superior looking to Facebook and DW superior to LJ, but the older ones have such built up inertia.

[kali-kali.livejournal.com]

Yes, there are too many. That's why I only use Facebook and LJ. No interest in Google+, or Dreamwidth. Yes, I have a Dreamwidth account with my username to have it reserved just in case LJ goes belly up, but I don't use it. LJ is my home. I've had it for ten years and I'm not intending to abandon it.

[sabotabby]

I know how you feel. Though I'm sure I want to keep LJ/DW separate from FB. Not sure about G+ yet. And I am very pleased that I've been able to avoid Linked In despite the fact that they send me e-mails telling me that my ex-boss, biological father, and some chick I knew in high school want to connect with me on it.

I do hope G+ kills Facebook. That would be great.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

G+ has the best chance of killing off some of the others; I can imagine it taking over from LJ/DW and LI for me if the security features work out right and if enough of my social network sticks with it.

[frenchzie.livejournal.com]

What...? Too many...?!

Gah... Indeed!

[moonlessnights.livejournal.com]

In terms of the read-only parts of these services, it works so long as they provide it.

Personally, I don't see a problem with these services existing. I know that, of the ones mentioned, I only use LJ and LinkedIn but I wouldn't want those services combined as they are completed orthogonal. I never really got the fear or frustration of the internet being a network but maybe I am just old (I remember back when people used various sites, over the course of the day, and seemed to be happier than they are now).

A modern, distributed notion of identity federation and data aggregation would be ideal since then the internet would turn back into a network even in the post-social age. Lately, it has been reverting to a mainframe model, not too dissimilar to the internet of the 90s where there was "the internet" and "AOL" (we seem to be reverting to that frustrating world, just replace "AOL" with "Facebook"). Identity federation is a solved problem (OpenID, among others) but the users don't demand it so that is in danger of withering, too. Modern data aggregation would require an inter-server protocol (largely for caching reasons and eliminating a many-to-one relationship in connecting an arbitrarily growing number of RSS sources with a browser) with slightly more state than RSS has (in order to describe access control and inter-item relationships).

I have been poking around at how to design such a protocol since it would save us from this reversion but, until recently, I wasn't allowed to be doing any thinking on my own time and now I have been buried by move overhead. Hopefully, I will be able to release some sort of proof-of-concept on SF.net, before I have to clam up, again. Of course, it would require that the service providers permit interoperability and I know that the users won't take responsibility for holding them to that.

[theobviousname.livejournal.com]

In some respects I agree with you, but... If everyone were on LJ, it'd be just like Google+. (I've never used FB, so I can't comment.) To some extent the smaller (more committed?) userbase has kept the noise down.

Personally, I also find the + UI to be much more intuitive than LJ's and it's much easier to focus your posts since it always makes you consciously select the audience. Posting to groups that include e-mail-only recipients is nice; if we clamour for it, perhaps they'll even consider allowing e-mail responses (at least from known e-mail-only parties) which (IMO) would really put it way above other networking sites.

I have a few noisy friends here on LJ, and they can make it just as hard to have a discussion with less frequent posters as a busy stream on + can. The solution both places is filters, but + makes it more convenient.

[theobviousname.livejournal.com]

This may be where I differ from most people bemoaning another social networking site: (http://xkcd.com/918/)

I've never been on FB and won't be. Resisted the pressure to join Linked In. But Google+... I already have a gmail account; it's not like they'll find out a lot _more_ about me. And 50% of the people I'd hypothetically want to connect to on those (and LJ) are already on Google+.

[soul-diaspora.livejournal.com]

I've been feeling quite curmudgeonly about Google+. Which might seem unfair given that I haven't tried it or even looked at it, but really, Google stopped Not Being Evil some time ago yet people still rush to jump onto whatever bandwagon they create.

I've always used LJ as an honest-to-goodness journal anyway, not for "social networking." I'll probably leave LJ someday, but I'll be going straight to DreamWidth, where I can get all the stuff I liked about LJ without the spam, the bugginess and the $&!# Facebook tie-ins. (And I'll almost certainly crosspost to LJ.)