I ran across this video that someone shared on Google Buzz this evening.  It is pretty eye opening about how fast these social networking sites have proliferated.  I can remember just about a year ago, Facebook had around 200 million members.  About three months ago I heard they had 400 million users.  Just this evening, I read on Google Buzz that Facebook had 540 million users.  This is just phenomenal.  Watch the video and read the statistics. 

One could argue the merits of boycotting Facebook for violating the trust of their users but why?  Why do these people get so bent out of shape about this?  By definition, Facebook is a social site intended purely to share information.  Anyone that does not want their information to be spread all over the place should not be posting it in the first place.   I have been shocked at the volume of cries to leave Facebook.  I do not think I should have been shocked but I have.  Think of the irony in these claims.  A site that was designed specifically to share as much information as you have been willing to share is somehow violating the trust of their users when they do what they were designed to do.

My response to these people making these claims is to tell them not to post anything they do not want others to see…It is that simple.  If you post information online, then you have to know that it is available anywhere.  Even if  you have people blocked, there are others that are not blocked that can copy and paste your comments to the blocked person.  If you do not want someone to know it, then do not post it online.  So I will do what about 75% of the rest of Facebook users by not cancelling my account.  I do not use Facebook that much anyway but I do not feel threatened at all.  Most people do not either.  If you are concerned that much, then you may want to withhold any comments from the web because there is a possibility that it will become public knowledge.

I do understand the concern that people have though I do think it is overstated.  I think it is not that bad as people are screaming.  I will let you know if I become a victim of them.  I hope that this craziness will fade fast because I think it has just as much basis as the bogus Y2K scare back in 1999.  This should be fun to watch.

It is funny and frustrating that we went the extra mile to treat the lawn for weeds and since the vast majority of the lawn was weeds, we are now left with bare dirt.  This will go down as one of the major backfires of all time.  An attempt to make the lawn look better turned out to be a barren desert.  We are slowly getting it back in shape.  With work taking up a greater amount of time that it normally does my house work has slowed. 

While I am talking about work I must mention a complete 180 degree policy shift with regards to social networking.  At work the computer network has many security rules for obvious reasons.  Among them were the blocking of all social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, Flickr, and a host of web based mail sites.  This week higher lever orders came down reversing this policy.  In fact this policy said in essence that social networking sites are crucial to mission communications.

I have to admit that I was completely shocked, pleased, perplexed, and worried at this policy reversal.  Shocked because I thought I would never happen, pleased because I use them myself, perplexed because the policy seems to go against everything we have heard over the years.  Finally worried because I know there will be abusers.  Most companies handle abusers with a heavy hand by removing this privilege from everyone.  I am convinced that it will not last even though I want it to.  I have often wondered why authority figures take this approach instead of dealing with abusers directly.  The best guess that I can come up with is that policing great numbers of people at the same time is time consuming and expensive.  By making these blanket policies, it is easier to be lazy and save money at the same time.  For the time being I will enjoy being able to check my Gmail from work for the first time ever.

I have decided to take a different approach to my behavior on these sites.  For one, I have removed myself from anyone that I work with on all social networking sites.  I not only removed them but I blocked them on Facebook.  This is because I often post on Twitter which updates my Facebook status.  Facebook shows comments of friends and their friends.  I do not want my comments to be held against me at work.  I have removed any reference to my employer from these sites so that I am not representing them on the Internet.  You may ask why I do this.   Well I have a weakness that I am sometimes ashamed of.  I sometimes hear a story on the news that really gets under my skin.  Many times I post my opinion online about that story and it sometimes comes across harshly.  I usually regret posting it after I do it but by then it is too late.  I know I work with a diverse group that range from liberal to conservative and many races.  It is easy to get caught up in the story of the day forgetting there are coworkers that disagree.

For this reason I think it is not wise to follow anyone from your place of employment. You may be friends with one or two individuals and forget that they are friends with other people from work.  Maybe even your boss.  You can easily see the potential for problems.  I have decided that it is not worth the risk.  I know a few people on the Internet that post using a pen name.  They do this not to hide their identity but rather to separate their public life from their employers.  There was a time that I thought they were just being paranoid.  This was until I ran a Google search on my own name and was amazed at how many search results came back, some with pictures of me and my family.  Maybe it is not being paranoid but being wise.  This web site is going to expire soon and I thought about changing the domain to something other than my name.  Is this crazy?  I don’t think so.  If I do, I will leave this one up for a month or so with a link to the new address so those that actually do care enough to stop by from time to time will be able to find it.

I do think it is important to have a brand that is yours but having a distinction from your personal life from your work is also important.  People often ask me why I have my own domain since social networking sites are so prevalent today.  This domain is my brand.  It is my address when Facebook disappears…when Twitter disappears.  I think that it is good to have an online address along with the social networking sites.  Your address can point to the other sites.  Over the years there have been many social sites that have come and gone but the domain makes it easy for your friends and family to find you.  Where most people would not post their home address, they can have their online identity.  Anyway…  I just wanted to explain why I have removed you and blocked you if you were blocked from my Facebook.  There is no offense intended whatsoever.  I know this one was long winded but I have been offline for a while.  Thanks for stopping by.

How appropriate on this Halloween that I have 666 followers on my Twitter.  Although that is just a coincidence, it is a little creepy.  If you look at the top right of the photo above you can see where I circled it. Last night I noticed this and asked for one more person to follow and no one would.  Then this morning I removed someone that I did not know just to make it 665 and then I came back in here to find that I had another follower.  If I had just left that one person on there, it would be 667.  Cue up the Vincent Price scary laughter. I thought this was funny so I had to make a screen shot just to share on my blog.

Once you have a presence that is all yours and that is not going anywhere then you can sign up for other programs or social networking sites.  These sites often have plug-ins that can be installed on your personal page.  Many of your friends will only participate on Facebook, or Myspace.  Many will only get on Frienfeed, or Twitter.  You can see the dilemma where you find yourself jumping from one site to another.  With the advent of the really simple syndication (RSS) feed, many systems have been established where all social site feeds can be fed together on one site.  Friendfeed is one of these as well as Google Reader.    Facebook is the big rave these days with more than 200 million active users so that is where many people gather.  The problem with that is popularity comes and goes with these sites.  You may remember Xanga.com when it was the big thing.  Then it was Myspace and so on.   It is only a matter of time before Facebook will be supplanted as the number one place.  By having your own page that is always there,  people can find you when one of the social sites goes under.  Secondly, by having your own site, search engines can find you allowing people to search for you.

If you have a Twitter account and use it the way it was intended, you will see that it is far more than just an instant messaging (IM) system.  Most of these social sites have a feature built in that allows your Twitter updates to automatically update your status on their sites.  Twitter is so light weight that you can use it even if you do not have a smart phone, or one capable of data transfer.  They allow you to send text messages to a short number, 40404.  As long as you do not post more than 140 characters in a single message, it will be posted on your Twitter page located http://www.twitter.com/yourusername.  Not only can you follow your updates on the Twitter page in real time, but it also updates other social sites simultaneously.  I have found that with many Twitter updates that I send, I get responses on Facebook, Myspace, and Friendfeed.  Since all of these sites notify you via email when someone responds to you, it makes it easy to immediately respond back.

If you ever find yourself bored at the doctor’s office, you can just send a text message that you are waiting for your doctor and someone on Facebook responds and it starts a conversation.  It helps when you are bored and stuck doing something you are not that excited about doing.  So to ask whether Twitter or Facebook is better, you should be asking how do you use them together.  I have met many ham radio operators online that also communicate using these tools.  It is really fun once you learn how to use them.  I hope this helps to explain a few ways to use them together.

What a pretty morning with the rain coming down.  It is only 64 degrees and rain and I love it.  For once we can turn the air conditioner off and let the outside air in.  Unfortunately having the window open means hearing all the neighbor noises but since it is daytime, I think we can handle it.

Everyone is telling me that Google Reader is more social now but the only social that I can find is in the settings it allows you to select which social sites you want your posts to go to.  Then on the bottom of each post it has a “send to” link where you can send that particular post to one of the social sites.  My Google account is paul.mccord and so if anyone can connect to me and give me a tour, I would appreciate it.  I am sure it has some nice functions but I have not had much time to play around with it that much.  As I do get some time, I will post back here about my findings.

Google Reader is going to have to be pretty good to “out do” Friendfeed.  I just love the way I can leave Friendfeed on the screen and things just automatically scroll across the screen.  I can be watching TV and see the stories scroll in real time.  This real time scroll is hard to beat.  This is one of the things that I am really looking forward to with the new Google Wave coming up in a couple months.  I watched the hour and 20 minute demo video that is on their site and it looks pretty cool.  As I said before, I will spend some time with Google Reader and give them a fair chance and maybe I will grow to like them.  About half or so of my Friendfeed user contacts also use Google Reader.

The reason that I did this was because I have found over time there are robots that are automatically connecting to users and posting spam. Secondly you get followers that search for certain political key words and then follow you.  Sometimes they agree and sometimes they disagree.  In either case, I do not wish to be arguing politics on Twitter. This is particularly irritating and so I usually try to un-follow them fast.  One of the strategies that has worked for me is when I purposely post something that I know will be offensive to certain political groups.  When they begin to lash out at me then I know who to un-follow.  It has been pretty effective so far.

In a given day, I will get 10 or so new followers that I do not even know.  It is clear these followers are not real people but robots because when you look at their profile they are following over 1,000 people and only 20 are following back.  Also they only have less than 100 updates.  Anytime someone has only a fraction of updates compared to how many people they are following, that is a pretty good give away.  There are some people that I genuinely enjoy hearing from on Twitter.

My blog keeps the same address and is not subject to the popularity of a particular social network.  Since these networks come and go within a two year period it would be easy to lose contact with some people.  If you do not actively use these networks then you could lose contact with those friends since the popularity of that network could dwindle and its followers would move on to another network.  For those that prefer to use these social networks as their primary interaction with friends, I would suggest you also maintain a domain hosted web site.  This can be a blog or just a static site where you have a permanent address where people can find you.  These addresses are indexed by search engines making them easier to find.  This way as the Facebook of the day give way to the newest social network, people will still be able to find you.

Also one of the benefits of having a blog over a real time social network is that you control the content and the duration of the post.  If you use a social networking site, the content is only visible as long as no one else is posting.  As new items are posted, these posts are moved down on the page giving way for new content.  Eventually your post is moved completely off the page.  In addition to this, there is another benefit to a blog over the social networking site.  Most social sites have limitations to how many characters you can post in a single post.  Like Twitter will only allow you to post 140 characters at one time.  These limitations vary depending on which site you go to but there are limitations.

Another problem with these social networking sites is that there seems to be a erroneous cultural attitude that email is obsolete and going away.  This idea is not very well thought out because email will never go away unless a newer “mail” technology comes into play.  This is because many or maybe I should say most employers require all communications to be made using the company email system.  At my work for example, they block access to all social networking sites and web based email systems.  If you would like to communicate with someone outside the organization, you must use the employer’s email system that is subject to monitoring.  You cannot control the content of a social networking site and therefore not allowed.  For this reason, many of those on social networking sites refuse to check their email.  To them it is an antiquated system that is not worth using.  They fail to realize that every one of these social networking sites requires an email address to confirm their identity.  Email is not going away.  These people discard their email and so you cannot leave them a forwarding address if you move.  By keeping a permanent web site that is available for search engines, you can still be found after several years.  These are just a few of the reasons why blogging is better than social networking. 

If you have not spoken to someone for five years, they can always go to their favorite search engine and search for you.  Your blog or permanent domain will be found in the search engine results while many of the social networking sites may not be.  You may not like to blog but having a permanent web address can be used to point your friends and family to your social networking site that you prefer to use.  I too enjoy using many of these sites and in fact use Twitter every day.  By having my permanent domain, people can find my Twitter page without having to search around all day.  I hope I have been able to explain a few things here so that you will understand why I maintain this blog even though I do not have time to get on it as much as I like.  On a social network, I would not have been able to post my information in such detail.  This makes it easier to fully explain my point.

The big argument is that Twitter has become so main stream and on practically every news talk show around while Friendfeed has so many more features.  They are arguing whether Friendfeed will ever overtake Twitter.  I think as of right now, I use Twitter the most.  I also use Twitter to update Facebook.  Friendfeed was the first to be able to allow posting stories, messages and allowing others to post messages to them.  Facebook had included that feature lately and I love that.  Friendfeed now has a notifier so you can read your Friendfeed messages right on your desktop.

I love the live updates on Friendfeed though it is very fast if you follow a lot of people.  If you follow a lot of people, you may want to use the filters or you are going to have a headache trying to follow all the information scrolling across your screen.  The incoherence of this post is a classic example of the information overload.  I am typing this at the same time while listening to the Gilmore Gang podcast, and reading the Friendfeed posts as they pop up on the bottom right side of the screen on the notifier.  I truly love it though I remember the nature and anonymity of Friendfeed in the past where it is very easy to be attacked in a very vicious manner if you post something that is not very popular.  If you have thin skin then you may want to be careful what you post because people are very aggressive when they disagree with  you. 

At the moment, Twitter and Facebook are leading the pack and looking at current trends I would say that Friendfeed would never take the lead.  I do know enough to know that you cannot judge by current trends because there was a time when Google was a small part of Yahoo before Google really took off.  There was a time when America Online dominated the online world and most people thought they would never be surpassed in the online world.  Over time you never know what is going to take off.  All I know is that in the last couple of hours since I saw the new beta Friendfeed, and seeing the rate of information flow, I am scratching my head in amazement.  On this one story, there are new posts appearing at a rate of about two per second.  Absolutely amazing real time information.  If you are one of those that must read every post you will find yourself mesmerized and hypnotized by the information overload.

You could literally spend 24 hours a day on Friendfeed where every news story in the universe is streaming across your screen from both political spectrums at the same time.  You could find yourself involved into a religious or political fight in seconds on Friendfeed.  I do like it though because it allows you to see both perspectives on virtually any topic you can think of.  As I said before you could be in a hostile environment easily so you need to be prepared for that.  Don’t let me give you the idea that everyone is ugly and unfriendly on Friendfeed because that is not the truth.  I am just saying there are thousands of people that actively follow these threads 24 hours a day and anyone can see it.  Due to the very nature of its fast and capable social connection, your posts are read very fast and responded to within seconds at times. 

Again, I think this is an amazing interface and destined to go far.  This has only been out a few hours and the traffic is just phenomenal.  Despite this, I am not likely to try to get all my friends to go to Friendfeed because it took me forever to get some of them to go to Facebook and Twitter.  I love all of them but some people do not like all the overload.  As people drift over, I will add them.  I use all three because there are different audiences.  If you are inclined to try these types of toys, then give it a try.  My Friendfeed URL is http://beta.friendfeed.com/paulmccord.  The one thing that makes Twitter so popular is the SMS, or text messaging feature.  This would be virtually impossible on Friendfeed due to the enormous amount of information. 

Again, I would like to apologize for the incoherence of this post, because I have too much information going on at the same time.  I hope you give it a try and see how you like it.  I think you will be hooked in no time.