A few days ago a friend sent me an invitation to join a social network site called MyYearbook. Intrigued, and being of a curious disposition (stop right there, Grant) I started to fiddle around with this, and before I was even quite aware of having done so, had sent invitations to everyone in my home email contacts book. For the past couple of days I’ve been sending apologetic notes. (If you got one of these invitations … I apologise).
As if by coincidence, whenever I log on to Facebook these days, it doesn’t take long for the program to take over my computer and open new browser windows faster than I can shut them down, just as if I were Mickey Mouse trying to get rid of all those proliferating broomsticks in the Disney rendition of The Sorceror’s Apprentice .
All of which brouhaha cast me back to the days when I inadvertently gave myself a MySpace page – and found I couldn’t delete the account. Apparently, there was a way – just send the folks at MySpace an email. Problem was, they never acted on it.
What do I think of all this? I think social network sites are, on the whole, a good thing. I think that most people think they’re a good thing. I find them useful for keeping in touch with people, whether in general or in special interest groups, and I think that most people who use MyFaceBeboBook.com would say the same.
In which case, could these sites be trying too hard – so hard that they are starting to put people off?
Is this, perhaps, a symptom of the global economic downturn, in which such sites are scrabbling harder for screen hits to please a shrinking corpse corpus of advertisers?
I wonder.
In the meantime I’m steering clear of MyYearbook and possibly Facebook, too – unless the wizard has returned to see to all those proliferating broomsticks.
in which such sites are scrabbling harder for screen hits to please a shrinking corpus of advertisers?
..all I can say: ads on the German facebook site.. scary. (I’ll just say: underarm laser hair removal.. yes, I know. We’ve moved on over here, too)
Oh, and Henry: my current problem with
facebooksocial networking sites is that my contacts are such an incredibly thrown-together collection of people – all and each of which can see my updates, posted links, etc… that I’m sometimes wary of what I put there (ok, I admit: I’m worried about what some family members see on there). Surely that defeats the purpose? (am I the only one who worries about this?)underarm laser hair removal? That’s nothing. In the UK they have adverts for his’n’hers matching left-handed belly-button warmers.
I absolutely detest that part of the “applications” – when the site just all of a sudden sends an invite from you to your address book.
I ended up pulling the plug on my old computer when I realised that it was trying to do something like that at facebook my first time there…. it actually stopped it, although my computer wasn’t too impressed with me I guess.
somehow I wonder if this doesn’t make the sites less appealing to people? But maybe they have already won and wheather or not you want to leave post email is not of their concern? (if you can leave that is, facebook doesn’t have an unregister feature)
I got one of your invitations, Henry, but ignored it. Having read this post, I am glad I did.
I got caught out this way a year or so ago, when I received an invitation from a friend to join a site called Quechup. I went to have a look and it hijacked my address book and sent invites to all. What is worse is that my home email is gmail, which captures everyone who ever wrote to you or who you wrote to, Amazon orders and the lot, so it was a major embarrassment. After some pain I emailed to “all” to apologise, but I was not sure if the email was more of a nuisance than the false invitation. I’ve been very wary of these sites since. Although I am on Facebook I don’t reply to persistent invitations to join groups or make friends with people I (don’t think I have) ever met or encountered.
Glad Nature Network is so “peaceful” by comparison, in that it doesn’t try to take you over.
persistent invitations – I meant -frequently received_ invitations. Some are persistent, but others I only get once. There are a heck of a lot of them, though.