Social Networking Sites

Having not posted a blog in almost three years, I felt compelled to start one on something I wanted to write about.

I'm not going to bore you with the dreary facts of social networking sites, as, I feel, it would be a complete waste of time. Most, if not, all of you reading this are fully aware of the characteristics of SNS (I'm abbreviating it 'cause I'm a lazy prick) to such a point where you have all probably turned into mindless fucking zombies, drooling over the keyboard every second you get a chance. However, to maintain a bit of clarity to this blog, I'm going to mention a few facts to make it seem like I actually have a fucking clue about what I'm on about.

 Okay, first off:

Myspace

This launched in 2003 and the chap involved with this is Tom Anderson. "Tom who?" you say. You know, Tom, the fellow that adds every single user (when they sign up) as a friend because (presumably) he has no real friends of this own.

The way I see it, this site never really got that popular. The only time I saw noticeable activity with this site was when everyone realised that actual bands made offical music pages. Everyone seemed to jizz in their pants with this.

In a more general view it is the music part of this SNS that keeps it somewhat popular which sort of puzzles me because every other SNS site has a music section to it so why is this site any different?

Also, generally if I wanted the hear the latest news or listen to the exclusive tracks then I would go to the actual bands website, making the whole music section in SNS sites quite redundant to say the least.

The only other sort of appealing thing about Myspace is that fact that it supports HTML and CSS. Yeah that's great... If you can code! Not that HTML is a difficult language, but most people probably don't have the slightest clue about how it works and what to do. This means that all that, 'Myspace is awesome because of the customization of the profiles', bollocks goes right down the shitter. So yes, you can customize pretty much every single detail of your profile, provided you eat fucking binary for breakfest!

Bebo

Launched in 2005 by Michael and Xochi Birch, this website (for the last while) is predominantly overrun by thirteen year-old scum bags who have practically re-written the english language at this stage.

This SNS is my favourite in terms of layout. It is very user friendly and looks the part, provided your profile 'skin' doesn't contain more colours than ravers LSD trip.

This SNS became very popular and people actually talked to each other on it.

There is not much else to say about it really... It did well despite being the last of the three SNS to set up, although, at the current moment, it looks as though the site is going through a midlife crisis. The 'skins' have become oddly disproportionate. There are new features constantly being announced that no-one either asked for nor gives a shit about and overall it looks like the site is dosed up to the eyeballs in some narcotic or another. It also likes to pretend that a certain other rival SNS isn't doing better than them... Dear, oh dear.

Facebook

Facebook (or as I like to call it, Facefuck or Facefail) Launched in 2004 and was created by some havard dude who goes by the name of Mark Zuckerberg.

Despite launching in 2004 it has only really gained true popularity in the last year or so, and has pretty much become the scientology of the SNS scene.

In terms of layout out, this thing is atrocious! It takes the longest time to get used to and even then you're not sure if you're doing it right. Even the the Myspace binary addicts will be like WTF?!

Like any other SNS it has privacy settings but these important features are subsequntially spoiled by the fact that, anything posted on your friends wall can be read by fucking everyone! Okay yeah sure, you could argue that in the other SNS, you can go to anyones profle and look at the comments but I can argue back that unless you have been living in a cave your whole life then you'd know you don't do that, as it can be considered by most to be, sad and pathetic. To add to this, people in other SNS must click on someones page to read what other people are saying to them, with Facebook, it practically shoves it in your face like a fat kid shoves chocolate cake in his/her face.

I must admit however, after prolonged exposure to Facebook, I have grown to like and it does have some cool features such as the 'Like' button and the photo viewer is pretty cool.

However, this does not change the fact that the only reason I use Facebook is because everyone else, one day, decided to try it out. This spread to everyone so after a small chain reaction of 'ZOMFG! Join Facebook!', it wasn't long before those last remaining few on Bebo (including myself) were alone and desolate. After discussing it with myself for a while I decided to go to the dark side and join Facebook.

This brings me to my next point.

Okay so, A SNS is where you can post pictures of yourself, write blogs, leave comments on your friends pages etc...Right? So can someone please explain to me why on earth, we went from one SNS (Bebo, which I was quite happy in) to another SNS (Facebook) to do, guess what... The same SNS bollocks we've been doing on the site previous! Why did we move from one site to another to do the exact same things?! The only thing different is that we have a shit layout instead of a decent one and we have to add all our friends again which is a complete pain the hole! I will never fathom the motive behind this!