On social networks
With Google’s big OpenSocial announcement, I find myself thinking about social networking in general. I think I may be a generation or so too old to really “get it,” but I do use four social networking sites at least a little bit:
- advogato: I’ve had an account there for quite a while, but the only thing I’ve done with it for years has been to syndicate this blog there. The theory of the certification network is very interesting, but it’s probably been five years since I’ve certified anyone or gotten a certification…
- ohloh: I created an account and claimed all the committer identities I could there a few months ago, but too be honest I don’t see much reason to look at the site. Besides, I’m very unimpressed that they seem to have completely ignored all the research from advogato on how to compute scores and just hacked up something hokey. And they can’t even seem to keep their kernel git tree updated properly.
- linkedin: I’ve had an account there for a while, and it seems like the most useful social networking site for what I want to do, which is really just to keep track of the email address of people I know and get back in touch with people I’ve lost touch with. I’ve even had one friend of a friend referred to me for a job opening, which I guess is exactly what the site is supposed to be for.
- facebook: I recently created an account there for the same reason I use linkedin. Like I said before, I think I’m too old to get into all the widgets and movie quizzes and share my favorite music and buy fish for my aquarium and so on, but I do have friends who aren’t on linked in who are on facebook. And it is nice to get birthday reminders I guess.
If Google can open all this up so I have better control of my own information and don’t have to deal with three or four different sites all the time, that would be cool. But I doubt they can pull off anything so pro-consumer….