social networking

[jlh]

So like, you guys? There are a lot of social networking sites. And it seems to me that they're really for different things, hence people being everywhere at once, and also that we aren't saying the same things in each space because then our friends just get the same message 5 times. (With all due respect to soupkills.) Anyway, so I was hoping to get your thoughts on these various sites in the comments, and how you use them, and all of that. Here on LJ, because these other sites don't seem to be a place to have a thought that is longer than a sentence.

[insert worry about long attention span and general inability to put a thought worth sharing in one sentence]

If you know my name, you can find me on facebook and myspace, where I'm on under my real name. I'm at twitter now too, but I'm sort of limiting that--it's a trial for now. So here are my burning questions:

1. Why do people hate the new Facebook, other than that it's new? And what are you using facebook for, other than watching other people's status updates and joining groups and playing scrabble?
   
2. What are people using myspace for? I find the thing to always be doing a little too much all at the same time, but I am old, and beginning to reconcile myself to this fact.'
   
3. What are people using twitter for? Is it really all "I had a ham sandwich for lunch"? Do you find that you have things to say that are only a sentence long? Do you get the alerts on your phone? What's considered "spammy"? Do you follow people who are not your friends?
   
4. Given all these places to go, is anyone really here on LJ anymore? I find the long format to be more suited to the way I think and communicate so I think it will remain my own home base, but what are you all thinking?

This is just a start--I know I'll have more questions for you all as I go along. Thanks!

Comments

[strawberrytatoo.livejournal.com]

1: I have no idea why new facebook is hated so much, I like it myself. I use facebook for RL friends, they all upload their pictures there and stuff.

2: I use Myspace mainly to keep up with musicians and bands that I like, mostly the non mainstream ones so I know if something is going on. I never use it to blog or anything.

3: I don't like Twitter, at all.

4: LJ will always be my home on the web, I love everything about it :)

[jlh.livejournal.com]

oh Ryan.

1. It seems to be about the wall being separated, and the applications on other tabs. I don't use the apps much, and I'm not great at the wall (I tend to comment on people's statuses more often) so I really didn't notice.

2. Me too. Though I feel I need to friend the Lohan because she's blogging up a storm over there!

3. We'll see how it goes.

4. Me too. I don't really mind our Russian overlords. I'm encouraged by their recent rule changes. And if the fandom-only blogging tool comes online I'll happily go over to it.

[evil-erato.livejournal.com]

1.) I somehow do not have you friended on Facebook! I must rectify this. Because I am all about stalking my friends. ;) Anyway, I hate the new FB because it splits all my stuff up into separate pages, and I hate having to click even more links to get to my timewasting games. Yes, I realize this is illogical because the point of the games (for me) is to pass the down time at work/give me an escape from the craziness, but it just seems so fussy somehow. And as you can see, I mostly use FB to play stupid games, and get the occasional status update on folks. I do use it as a quick messaging center with local friends, but that is incidental since we still use texts/phone calls as well.

2.) I have no idea. I have a myspace page, but I really hate the interface and thus only have like, two people friended, one of whom I pretty much avoid at all cost these days because he is still an asshat.

3.) We've discussed this, but for the record I use Twitter to facilitate my OCD. If I can get a thought out of my head by telling someone, I can be more productive, and since I don't always have someone on speed dial, Twitter it is.

4.) I'm still here! :)

[jlh.livejournal.com]

1. Yeah, what the hell? You can find me via Ely pretty easily.

2. I have only C____ and Rach friended, and a couple of bands, but I never really check in over there. C made me get it because he's in a band, but then nothing ever really happened so I'm like, whatever, dude.

3. I am looking forward to seeing how to make this work for me!

4. God, and thank goodness for that!

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

What are people using myspace for? I find the thing to always be doing a little too much all at the same time, but I am old, and beginning to reconcile myself to this fact.

I use MySpace mostly to keep up with my music fandoms, but TBH I haven't found any decent "conversation" on individual musicians' MySpaces. So I guess I would have to go to a MySpace group to get that discussion and, frankly, I can get that discussion on LJ, the musician's official website, or Yahoogroups. I prefer LJ for talking about my own life, general observations, etc. I mean, what's the thing on MySpace that asks what you're doing, but gives you only 4 options, none of which involves reading or watching TV ;)

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I mean, what's the thing on MySpace that asks what you're doing, but gives you only 4 options, none of which involves reading or watching TV

seriously? LOL. Yeah, I don't find that musicians have all that much to say that I care about, and that's really okay, because they give me music and that's enough!

[goraina.livejournal.com]

There's a generation of people who use Myspace EXCLUSIVELY for all their communication needs. They don't use email, websites, or instant messenger programs that aren't Myspace! My brother (age 23) is one such person. Email him, he won't respond. Myspace-message him, and he'll respond within 5 minutes.

I like Facebook 'cause a lot of my old friends are there. It's a nice way to keep up with people you used to know.

I like Twitter 'cause these days I have a lot of random thoughts I want to put somewhere, but they are too trivial for and LJ posting. Less pressure to respond, too!

Still, I like LJ best. It's the best, I feel, for really getting to know what people are about! Provided they actually use it, that is. :)

As far as spam: I HATE when people import their daily Tweets onto LJ and Facebook! Hate hate hate.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

As far as spam: I HATE when people import their daily Tweets onto LJ and Facebook! Hate hate hate.

It is seriously my new pet peeve. Tweets that are @someone make NO SENSE to anyone else so why put them on your LJ and your Facebook? They are not all the same thing!

Finding old friends seems to be what people are grooving on facebook for, and a lot of the younger folks seem to have moved from myspace to facebook when they could, though the musicians are entrenched. My BFF is in a band, so he's the one who made me get the myspace.

I usually share random thoughts in a chat, but maybe I'll do less of that and more twitter in future!

I adore LJ, I really do. I like being able to see people's art on it.

Oh! I should have put deviantart on here, I'm on it but I have no idea how to use it like, at all. I find it very unweildy and confusing.

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

1. The only negative opinion I've heard about Facebook had to do with the fact that it's pretty much impossible to delete your profile. Or maybe that was a myspace issue?

2. I think Jason Castro uses his to share his music. :D

3. I always see twitter posts, but have never listened to them.

4. Unsurprisingly, I do not care for social networking, so I haven't bothered with Facebook or myspace or twitter or whatever. I've visited them (except twitter) and I think I even have a myspace profile, but all I know about them is that they're blogging places with some differences from LJ that I don't actually care to take advantage of. Um.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

1. I'm not sure! Facebook is changing its design and people are all up in arms and I couldn't work out why because I thought it was fine. And what I discovered in that is that ironically, Facebook is not the place to ask questions about Facebook!

2. Yeah, it's just following bands apparently.

4. That's what I've been feeling. There are friends that are on one or the other, mostly "rl" friends on Facebook v "fandom" friends on LJ.

[vermilionsun.livejournal.com]

1. Not sure why people hate the new Facebook, other than that they're not used to it. Personally I like the way all the apps are more segregated now (since I'm not much of a fan of the apps), and how there are so many more ways of commenting on people's updates.

3. I like Twitter because I find that most of the time I DO just have a few words to say about things. I admit I'd become frustrated with blogging/LJ because I've been too busy to write real entries and I'd just want to grumble briefly about my morning commute, which never seemed to merit an entire blog post. Yes, this is the lazy woman's way out, I admit it. But lazyness and inanity aside, Twitter's 140-character constraint encourages (some) people to construct their thoughts in a tight and often very witty voice. Snark and one-liners galore! Yes, it's still inane, but it's pithy and fun inanity.

4. Even though I don't post very much, LJ is still my favorite way to keep up with people. When people post entries here it definitely has more weight and content than a few lines on Twitter or Facebook. It's not obsolete... we're just busy!

[jlh.livejournal.com]

1. It does seem to be about the segregation of the apps and the wall. I'm not a huge app person, so whatever.

3. I can see that Twitter is sort of, blogging for people who don't have enough to say for a blog. My thoughts end up being sort of long because I like to let them coalesce? But I'm thinking about Twitter more now.

4. LJ is definitely, though, my favorite because it's so interactive and to me seems more social than the others, actually!

[mmichelle.livejournal.com]

1. I don't like the new facebook because of the way it splits my profile up - I liked having it there all neatly displayed without having to click multiple times to get to stuff. I also don't like how the mini feed and wall have become one - I like wall posts in one place, and a mini feed in a separate (though since I have my mini feed turned off I guess that doesn't technically apply to me). I use facebook to share pictures with all my friends (because oh, do I take a lot of pictures) and to communicate with friends who aren't people I'm super close to (since I'd obviously just call the super close ones on the phone).

2. Uhhh I don't use myspace. I didn't realize anyone still did, all my friends left en masse about midway through our senior year of high school (ie Dec 06-Jan 07) for facebook.

3. Twitter I simply do not understand. Seriously.

4. Stay on LJ!! My LJ is the only place my fandom self is online - I use facebook for rl friends and LJ for online stuff, so I strongly encourage everyone to stay on LJ because it's definitely the only place anyone will find me (for fandom purposes).

[jlh.livejournal.com]

1. I really like the "home" view and how easily I can move from the mini feed to the statuses. I never really used the apps. I know a lot of people use it for photos, but I'm not really doing that.

2. A friend in a band made me sign up, but then his band never updated, so I was like, what's up with that?

4. I'm totally staying! It just seemed (before this post, obv) that people weren't really around. But that may be part summer, and part that this season of PR is really boring people.

[cricketnyc.livejournal.com]

1. I don't hate the new FB, just still getting used to it. I use FB to keep in touch with people I don't see often, and it's been great getting back in touch with old friends (and not so great getting in touch with others) from grade school and high school. A lot of my clients have FB pages for networking and such, so it's also kind of a work thing.

2. I use myspace to check calendars for musicians I follow, and that's about it. I was never a fan, and once all my friends over there migrated to FB I was happy.

3. Don't use twitter. I'm on IM all day and can express those thoughts and experiences to someone I'm online with.

4. I don't post as much on LJ because it's often easier to do a quick update on FB or just talk to people directly, but I read every post on my filtered friends page, and actually comment from time to time!

[jlh.livejournal.com]

1. I had a bunch of people on Facebook joining that "I hate the new Facebook" group and I wasn't sure why. Apparently it's about the apps.

2. I hear, yes, that there was some sort of mass migration to FB from myspace. Hurrah, seriously.

3. This is what I do now! So I'm not sure about really broadcasting those thoughts, particularly in a manner in which people do not usually respond.

4. You do comment, it's true. LJ is not for the quick, and I think it's a bit much for some people; it isn't the way they want to interact with the universe. Which is seriously fine, I think. But the whole, allow me to use all social networking spaces in the same manner doesn't seem to work, at least to me.

[phoenixsong]

1) Facebook: I actually switched to FB from MySpace, initially to keep up with my cousins. Because no way in heck do I want my family to even know my LJ exists. Currently, I have family, high school and college friends, and coworkers on my FB list -- which is actually an insane number of people, more than I watch on LJ even. But the difference is I know probably 95% of my FB friends from previous real-life interaction. I've got a handful of fandom and other random people (including a favorite author and a favorite musician) friended, but yeah, mostly RL people.

And for the record, I am another who does not hate the new FB interface. *shrug*

2) MySpace: I loathe MySpace. I initially signed up there when I found out some of my cousins had accounts, but once I realized they were on FB, too, I pretty much abandoned it. I even set my status to redirect family & HS friends to FB if they really wanted to know what was going on with me. I login maybe once every 2-4 months.

3) Twitter: It's a way to make quick rants and keep in touch with my SO during the work day without using an actual chat client. I do not consider Twitter posts on LJ to be spammy; I do consider people who take up +90% of my twitter page to be spammy. And I'll admit that sometimes, I just like the challenge of trying to fit a complete thought into 140 characters s:)

All that said, I originally signed up for Twitter just to log food and water during the day. Then all my friends joined, and that was the end of that.

4) I had some personal internal stuff going on over the summer that I wasn't comfortable posting about at all. But I am trying to make more, and more substantial, posts again. I don't plan on abandoning LJ anytime soon, unless TPTB really screw things up and force me to go get a WordPress blog. But that would make life...difficult, to say the least. I like LJ, I like how it works. I just need to re-discipline myself into actually recording things here instead of depending on Twitter posts to keep track of what's going on.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

1. I have a lot of classmates on FB, so that's most of what I do there. My relatives are not really online, except for one niece who's on myspace.

2. It's really, really noisy, not just aurally but visually, and seemingly only for noise's sake, not to any real end.

3. I find that twitter posts on LJ just really don't work somehow. The tweets @ someone else just have no context at all. LJ isn't really a place for the quick shot, and they always seem to be a bit out of context. I demand context.

4. Ugh, wordpress. No thank you.

[misscake]

It's interesting you ask this question because in the last week, I have been "friended" (read: invited to create an account) by two people: one on Facebook and one on Myspace. I don't have account on either of those sites and I don't really have an interest in doing so. I graduated from university 17 years ago, well before the whole Facebook explosion and the look of Myspace has never appealed to me.

I was introducted to social networking (read: LiveJournal) via fandom and know that none of my real life friends or family are into that sort of thing. At one point, I considered setting up a blog for family and RL friends, but I'm not convinced anyone would take the time to read it. Most of them are still at the let's-forward-every-junk-email-we-can stage.

I'm of the same mind with Twitter. I don't have an account and don't follow anyone else's. And I don't mind if people post them to LJ (though I can never understand why they post what are sometimes responses to someone else's Tweets - it's no fun to read one side of a two sided conversation).

I prefer the format, structure, and nature of the interaction at LiveJournal (and it's copycats - I have accounts at JF and IJ).

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I do much prefer the method of interaction on LJ to other services, but I'm an introspective person who likes to let a thought develop. A lot of folks are intimidated by that, and want to be able to send out something very short without worrying too much about if it's deep. I feel like it's junk food, at least for me.

[pinkfinity.livejournal.com]

I use facebook as a way to keep up with a lot of people from high school and college, but LJ is my primary blog. But the difference for me is that on facebook, I've sought out people from Penn and high school, whereas here on LJ, I do have a dozen Penn people in my flist but they're all people I've met via fandom and then we've learned about our Philiadelphia overlap.

For me, twitter is very useful when I'm at a con, or trying to meet up with someone, because it lets people who are actually IRL looking for me know where I am. I'll be using it a lot next week at eyecon and it'll bore anyone who either isn't there, or who isn't interested in Supernatural, to tears.

I avoid everyone I went to law school with. No interest in them.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I think I'm trending to where you are. And what I like about what you're saying is that you use the different interfaces differently. FB is definitely a place where I'm keeping up with more high school and college friends, and a few old work friends. LJ is all fandom, and also a lot of local friends because nearly all of my local friends are either fandom friends of geeky enough to understand the posting of nc17 rps fic. LJ is also for loooong thoughts, which I have rather often. I'm wondering if I really have short enough thoughts for Twitter.

[locumtenens.livejournal.com]

LJ is still my main form of communicating - both posting and reading others' posts.

I use FB secondarily, but mostly for keeping up with RL, non-fandom friends. I don't post there, really, just read and occasionally comment on other people's pages.

MySpace could FOAD for all I care. Yes, I have an account, but I never use it. Couldn't even tell you the last time I signed on.

And I totally don't get Twitter. When other people post using it I skip on by. I have no idea what they're talking about given that there is NO context for any of the statements, and frankly, I don't care. If it's interesting enough to share, can it not wait until you have time to write about it properly?

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I really am beginning to hate the Twitter LJ posts. They just don't actually make any sense, because they have no context. No context is fine in a sea of no context, but is irritating in a place that's all about context. But I also hate it when people send me links and don't say what they are or why I should care, so that might be a personal pet peeve. (Though not that personal, as people are certainly coming out of the woodwork to bitch about the twitter LJ posts in their comments to this post!)

FB is really for me to keep up with high school and college friends that used to only get an xmas card, but who I do like and want to see what's up with them.

I'm never on myspace. Seriously.

and I am NOT leaving LJ anytime soon! LJ is my main man!

[soupkills.livejournal.com]

These days I do nothing but tweet and have it show up automatically on FB/LJ (sorry goraina). I know enough people who only follow one of those three that I'd like to keep updated that I don't see a way around it. Twitter for me is convenient enough (with a blackberry client) and short enough that I don't mind keeping track of what I'm doing or posting links to it, which is pretty much all I ever used LJ for anyway.

Mostly I'm on these different sites to keep track of/communicate with the people who are on these different sites. I should look into friendfeed, which is supposed to help with this. It's the same reason I have IM accounts on the different networks.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

How will friendfeed help you with that? What is it supposed to do?

I think the problem with tweets as an LJ feed is that they don't make any sense, because they show up entirely without context. In an interlocked pile of all the tweets from other people they make more sense, but on their own as an LJ entry they just seem to float there, especially the "@friend" tweets which of course make no sense whatsoever. But I'm a whore for context and interaction; I don't like it when people send me a link without telling me what it is, and I want to be able to respond to what someone is saying without feeling kind of lame for taking them seriously, if that makes sense? I feel like if Twitter is a place to find out what people are doing, LJ is a place to find out what people are thinking, so the tweets seem not only frustratingly short, but also ephemeral--do you care what I have to say about a fleeting thought you had 6 hours ago? Probably not.

But I think the tweets live very nicely as FB statuses. For me, I like the idea of using the different networks in different ways, rather than bending, say, FB to my LJ needs.

[honestys-easy.livejournal.com]

1. I got Facebook back when it was the new hotness in 2004, and back then it was a great way to see how you were connected with other people in your school, schedule events, join groups and post drunken pictures for future blackmail. I stopped using it extensively when the different apps started streaming in because no, I do NOT want to know what kind of Heroes ability I would have. I only signed up for a few of those, including Scrabulous. Which brings me to my next point - you can still play Scrabble on Facebook???? Link, please. Nowadays I check it periodically because people I know and love still use it and I post photos and updates to show people I'm still alive.

2. I originally signed up for myspace to stalk some guy I liked at work - incredibly mature, yes yes. Then he found it and friended me so I had to make some other friends to show that I wasn't a creepy stalker. I don't really use it for personal things and I don't send many messages on it (though I should, everyone else messages me), but I do find it helpful for getting the newest info on my favorite music artists.

4. I use LJ the most for everything - the way I see it, Facebook and Myspace are profile networking sites, where you can friend someone's profile and gain information on a one-time basis, or sporadically updated basis. LJ is more about the daily life, it's much more personal if you want it to be, and the journals and communities lend better to group discussion and communication than the groups on Myspace and Facebook. Plus I keep my Facebook profile fandom-free, apart from friends I made through fandom, and Myspace I just don't care enough. LJ is my personal place, it's my fandom place, it's my every place.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

1. Can you? There is a new game from the scrabbulous guys, I know that, but the rules seem to be random and strange and I don't really get them yet. We need to explore this.

I really like poking people, I'll admit that. All the rest of the apps I don't really care about that much. Oh, and sending people good karma.

2. HA. I am never there, and I need to find and link to more artists, but I find the seach function to be basically shitty. I had to keep looking up artists online someplace else, and finding the link to their myspace.

4. That is such an excellent way to look at it. I think that while Twitter is about what people are doing, LJ is about what people are thinking. Some folks are a little intimidated by the long form, but I'm more intimidated by the short form of tweets to be honest. But yeah, FB seems to be more about posting a profile than really interacting in real time, which is what I want from a social networking site. *hugs LJ*

[imaginarycircus.livejournal.com]

The Facebook change is sort of whatever. I don't care. It still tells me when stuff happens to my friends. Myspace gives me a headache and I only joined because people I used to hang out with organized a reunion a couple of years ago using it. I should delete myself.

Twitter mystifies me. I sort of hate the Twitter updates on LJ. I pretty much skip them. I am tempted to make a fake twitter account and sum up the lives of famous people using it.

Descartes

5:00am got up and taught the Queen of Sweeden algebra
6:34am thought about new way to solve four line locus problem
7:15am freezing to death is this unheated castle
9:13am developed lung infection
10:34am thought about God some more
11:56am dead

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I think you should do that. It's like that person who is reposting Peyps diaries on blogspot or something. (Is that Queen Christina?) The twitter updates on LJ suck, and I'm so glad that people vented about this here, because I didn't want to make a post and make my friends who do that sad. They just have no context. They are not an LJ post, and it's irritating that people treat them as such, because it means that they never make real LJ posts.

[aethelflaed2.livejournal.com]

1. I don't hate the new FB at all. It annoys me when it freezes up. I use it mainly to find friends from HS and college. I'm always amused when FB suggest people I didn't like in school. I ignore most of the apps, except for Superpoke and Karma. I find it funny that we are roommies and yet, we haven't bothered to friend each other on FB.

2. I never bothered with myspace. It never appealed to me even as a way to waste time while temping. Also, most companies I have temped for tend to firewall myspace.

3. I don't twitter. I don't really understand twitter. It drives me crazy when I see twitter messages that are @friend on LJ or FB. I have no idea what the conversation is and therefor don't care.

4. LJ is still my favorite place. I prefer reading complete thoughts and I don't mind my friends' rants. When I'm bored at work, memes entertain me and get my brain working. At the moment, like you, I'm a little overwhelmed by the political rants. Most of my friends' lives have gotten crazy lately and they don't post as much now. While I miss their sillier posts, they tend to update with more important stuff and I feel a bit more connected with them.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

1. I generally know what your status is. I also enjoy superpoke and karma, but other than that I'm not sure what I'm doing there yet. I'm not good at updating my status.

2. Yeah, I so wouldn't be there if C hadn't made me.

3. I find it interesting that this entry has tapped into a sea of annoyance at the twitter LJ feed! I feel that they are not entries, and make no sense, and when folks forgo making entries for twitter—when they consider tweets as good an update as an entry—I get irritable, because it really isn't what I want to hear from people, this sort of stream of consciousness. I don't care that you took a walk this morning. I care that you had a weird conversation with your brother and you're rethinking your love for James Joyce, or whatever.

4. That's it, complete thoughts! And a sense of connection! Totally!

[smilie117.livejournal.com]

1. I haven't noticed a difference because I just don't use Facebook at all - haven't really been tempted to. The friends from HS or college I keep in touch with, I do by e-mail.

2. I don't use myspace personally - I do visit some for bands and such, but then sometimes I get annoyed by the amount of time it takes to load the page (I still have dial-up at home and work blocks it now though even at work it used to take forever to load on high speed).

3. I don't use twitter as I don't have text messaging enabled - it just doesn't make sense for me at least, as I can't bring my cell phone into work anyway so it's better to leave me a message or send me an e-mail. I'm of mixed opinions about seeing Twitter posts to LJ -- on the one hand, if it's so people can update about their day and all, and they don't normally post to LJ, that's good to see how they are doing. On the other hand, as others above had said, it's like following one-side of a conversation which just gets confusing and then I tend to skip them over.

4. LJ is the place for me - I am going to make the most out of the permanent account I have (I forgot how long I have to use it to know I've got my money's worth) and most of my flist it seems, even if they use facebook/myspace/twitter, are still here on LJ. :D

I also am not motivated really to keep a facebook/myspace/twitter and an LJ account up to date. I hardly have time to post and follow my flist as is - I don't really have time to split among facebook/myspace/twitter.

:)

[jlh.livejournal.com]

1. Ali lured me with scrabble. I am still looking for a scrabulous replacement! But in the meantime a LOT of my college is on there, and that's really fun.

2. So much load time! It's insane.

3. I do not want twitter texting my phone. Like, at all. I worry that real texts will get lost in the morass. I need to explore Twitter further to work out what I want to do with it, though.

4. I am also permanent! And yes, even though there are people here who are also elsewhere, they haven't really "left". The consensus among those who use more than one software is that they are each good for different uses, which makes a lot of sense to me.

[airemay.livejournal.com]

I haven't used the "new" facebook yet. I'm avoiding it because I like the old layout. I use facebook to keep in touch with my real life friends- most of my fandom friends are on LJ. A lot of my friends respond MUCH faster to a wall post than an e-mail. Some even will take longer to respond to a message on facebook than a wall post. It's an alterative to e-mail. I would rather keep everything in one place, especially since wall posts are public. However, if my friends won't e-mail, what can I do? I also like to view people's photos. I've found that is a great marketing tool, being able to personally invite all of your friends to an event. I'm in theatre, so that is great. Course, it does take back the personal aspect of an individual invite.

I rarely use myspace. I HATE the layout. It is too much stimulation. Some of my friends don't have facebook, or just use myspace more. Some people put things on myspace that do not go on facebook! I also can casually lookup people that I may not want to talk to, but want to know what is going on with their life. For example, I used to check my ex-boyfriend's myspace for months after we broke up. I was very fond of his family, and wanted to see how they were. I also was curious to see if he was seeing anyone. Now, I don't do that anymore. I've gotten over that phase. :)

I don't use twitter. It seems to me like an extension of the facebook status. I hardly ever update that, so another website that is all about status updates is useless to me.

I love livejournal! I love the longer format of a blog. I like being able to (easily) control who can view my content. Also, I do not have to provide a lot of personal information to get started. I don't purposefully hide my LJ. However, it is not associated with my real name, so there is a higher level of privacy.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I don't find that my friends on FB use the wall all that much, or maybe it's only that I don't? I'm not sure. It's certainly not an alternative to email for me in that my emails are longer and more personal than anything I'd put on someone's wall.

I'm trying to probe the difference between FB status and Twitter; some commenters say there is one. I haven't seen it, but then, I know several people who broadcast the same thing to both.

My LJ is not my real name either, though I do have my name registered. It's fannish, it's media, it's fic, it's all of that. And I love the long format. I worry that the short and ephemeral nature of twitter will flummox me. But I'm going to give it a try!

[tenebris.livejournal.com]

Oh Twitter. Poor misunderstood Twitter. I keep meaning to write a post on this, but never seem to get in the right frame of mood for it.

The popular conception of Twitter as "what you had for lunch" is not entirely correct. It depends on Twit-er. I like to use it as a microblog, just summing up bits of my day (and you'd be surprised how much 140 characters is, and the fun challenge of phrasing the thought in just that amount). But there are people who use it for a series of one-liners, or to vent their thoughts, or to update people on their products/services. The tech community has jumped on it to a huge degree, for instance.

But you also get fascinating things like Fake Sarah Palin (http://twitter.com/fakesarahpalin), or Fake John McCain (parodies of Barack Obama, I suppose, who is on Twitter and does post), where they both mock the candidates and post good links to news stories. It's grown beyond the "what are you doing?" question, I think, into it's own little microcosm.

This isn't to say the LoudTwitter feeds to LJ aren't annoying. And people HAVE the option of turning off those @ replies, so I don't see WHY they do it. I get the LoudTwitter thing--it's nice to archive--but yeah, those make no sense. Also, without the sense of community that goes with it, Twitter just appears more confusing and opaque than it already is.

Also, yes, you can SMS to it, and you can get updates from specific people as SMSes--you get an alert when someone's posted something new.

*^^* Pardon the long response, but I seriously adore Twitter. It's got a lot of interesting people saying some very interesting things, and it's fun to have a place to put those random thoughts of the day. Not to mention what I had for breakfast. :)

[phoenixsong]

YES. I may not always succeed, but I try to use it more as a "microblog." I don't see it as at all similar to, say, a FB status -- in fact, the people who use Twitter to set their FB status annoy me. They're just two entirely different things in my mind.

[piperki.livejournal.com]

I'm 99% LJ. I use myspace for people who know me IRL although I don't have my name on my myspace page and I don't share it with, say, co-workers--but like other people I don't want to give access to my LJ, like fellow musicians or whatever. I don't have Facebook because that's definitely a real name/real face place and that's too much public for me.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

The real name/face places have no connection whatsoever to this place. So they're really places for me to talk with old friends from high school/college/etc. Rather than a place for an "online life", they're an online extension of my offline life. So I don't feel like it's public in a way that just living in the world isn't. But that's a lot about good friends showing up there than anything else.

I think my thinky-thoughts will still be 99% LJ. And I've also got my real name as an LJ for when I'm ready to blog about my academic career. LJ just feels like a good place for what I do most of the time.

[darth-kittius.livejournal.com]

I don't like the new facebook, although I don't spend much time there anyway -- so it doesn't much matter. I don't like the tabs, I liked having everything on one page. Also if there are going to be tabs, I want to decide what is up first for people when they come to my page. If I have to have the tabs, let me order them.

But mostly I am on LJ because I agree... it fits the way I think and communicate. I'll be here.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I love tabs. As a general rule I find tabs to be a fantastic way to organize myself. I love adium for that reason; I never lose chat windows anymore! I adore tabbed browsing. I like seeing everything available at a glance. Before, I didn't feel like I had everything on one page anyway, but I hadn't been using that "home" view before the new facebook. I'd been just, on my own page? But now I'm almost never there.

But yeah, LJ is the best fit for how I personally want to communicate with people. Absolutely.

[zorb]

I avoid all of 1, 2, and 3 because as much as I'll name-squat on some sites and networks, I really don't like to spread myself all over the web. Too many different "friend" groups and update systems for me! I have a hard enough time getting through my LJ flist some days.

I'm on LinkedIn, but that's for professional purposes (not that I've used it much), and while I have a Google Profile, that's not really the same thing as walled networking sites. Anyone else who wants to get in touch with me can figure out a way. :-D

EDIT: And the other reason why I'm not into most profile-type sites (FB, MySpace, etc) is because I'm content-centric in my online experience, and LJ handles that much better.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I have a posse of pals that I mostly kept up with only via xmas cards. I'm excited to find all of those people on facebook, and be able to keep up with them more frequently.

My LJ flist, though, is definitely manageable!

It's interesting how much people are saying, those other sites are good for different things, and even the people who love Twitter hate the LoudTwitter LJ posts. I feel better about disliking them now.

[amyamy.livejournal.com]

I don't really have an opinion on the new facebook - I have one, and I check it more or less regularly but I don't really -use- it.

Twitter I really like these days, actually. I do follow a handful of people I don't actually know (Will Wheton is my geekish overlord, and an astronomy blogger, for one), but mostly I use it for the random thoughts which don't really seem to merit a full LJ post. Particularly when I'm out and about. I don't have it alert my phone but I do post from my phone, so whenever I have a little thought which merits (to lesser or greater degree) sharing I just txt it there, since I don't have many people in the states to txt with.

But I'm so not leaving LJ. LJ is home.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I wonder about these random thoughts that people report having. Do I just not have them? Like, my random thought right now is that What's My Line isn't as good when Bennett is away. This thought makes absolutely no sense to anyone who doesn't already know that What's My Line is a game show from the 1950s that is on GSN at 3am and so I'm tivo'ing it and watching it as I eat my breakfast, and that Bennett Cerf, founder of Random House (pictured), is one of the panelists, and that right now (in the real time of the show, summer 1956) Bennett is in Europe and so people like Peter Lawford have been filling in for him.

I guess I'm not sure I have random thoughts that make sense out of context, and so I worry about everyone dropping me on twitter before I even start because of that!

[kay-taylor.livejournal.com]

1) I don't use Facebook. I hate Facebook.

2) I don't use MySpace. I hate MySpace.

3) I don't use Twitter. I find Twitters appearing on my Friends page annoys the hell out of me, and makes me filter that user off my standard reading filter, because it's normally all "I had a ham sandwich for lunch" aaaaaaaaand I don't need to know.

4) I'm on LJ! I hate social networking sites.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

The consensus is that LoudTwitter basically sucks. I'm so glad because I was hating it but I thought that was just a luddite thing on my part.

Oh social networking sites, how ambivalent I am about you.