Conglomeration
So Google Reader has a "like" button now, like Facebook. And you can follow people, like Twitter. Actually you could read your friends' shared items before, but I guess that wasn't catchy enough so they redid the interface a bit and renamed it. We are slowly moving toward a single massive RSSFeedFacebookTwitterEmailBlogIM social networking model, and everybody wants to be the one that wins the war for users and advertising dollars. I'm not sure I want this.
I use and like all of these tools (except Twitter), but I use them for different things. I adore Google Reader, but I really only want to use it for intake, not output. I like Facebook for occasional updates from a class of people I call "friendly acquaintances", but I don't want them to suddenly be spamming it with every single link they like and quiz they take and thought they ever have. I hate people who flood my Facebook homepage and swiftly defriend them. Email is for business and for communicating with my actual friends and family members when they happen not to be available on IM, my preferred online friend communication system. And the blog is for when I have things to say to anyone, or everyone, or no one in particular, and people who are interested can go read it without my having to spam their Facebook or Google Reader or whatever.
So I like information access, but I also like to have it segmented and controlled. I love the "like" feature on Facebook but I hate it on Google Reader, because on Facebook it tells me what my friends like and on GR it tells me what somebody? everybody? anybody? likes. This is not useful or interesting information and I want it to go away. I guess the GR version is really more like Digg and so forth, which I never really got into. The Facebook "like" is more of a nonverbal friendship ping. But the point is, I wish my social networking sites would quit trying to steal from and absorb the others, and just get better at what they each do best.
I use and like all of these tools (except Twitter), but I use them for different things. I adore Google Reader, but I really only want to use it for intake, not output. I like Facebook for occasional updates from a class of people I call "friendly acquaintances", but I don't want them to suddenly be spamming it with every single link they like and quiz they take and thought they ever have. I hate people who flood my Facebook homepage and swiftly defriend them. Email is for business and for communicating with my actual friends and family members when they happen not to be available on IM, my preferred online friend communication system. And the blog is for when I have things to say to anyone, or everyone, or no one in particular, and people who are interested can go read it without my having to spam their Facebook or Google Reader or whatever.
So I like information access, but I also like to have it segmented and controlled. I love the "like" feature on Facebook but I hate it on Google Reader, because on Facebook it tells me what my friends like and on GR it tells me what somebody? everybody? anybody? likes. This is not useful or interesting information and I want it to go away. I guess the GR version is really more like Digg and so forth, which I never really got into. The Facebook "like" is more of a nonverbal friendship ping. But the point is, I wish my social networking sites would quit trying to steal from and absorb the others, and just get better at what they each do best.