Week Two.

The theme for this week's task is 'social networking sites'. Bebo, Myspace, LinkedIn and Facebook are targeted for apprasial.

Myspace is familiar to me. A few years ago I used it actively despite initial misgivings that it was a juvenile and pointless use of time. It turned out to be more fun and interesting than I realised. Although Myspace as a whole is clunky, poorly layed-out, prone to spam, and slow to load, it has two charms: if your coding skills are good enough you can customise the appearance of your profile extensively; and it's a bit 'alternative'. By that I mean it's not as straightforward, preppie, and boring as Facebook. You can send silly little sparkly animations to your Myspace friends. Link to songs and videos on your profile. It's useful for bands, artists and generally-creative types to advertise their wares.

If Myspace is a quirky teenager then Facebook is a Dockers-wearing balding middle-aged dad. It's a staid version of Myspace with much less emphasis on self-expression: we're all locked into that boring, boxy profile template. But it's become a monster of the Internet, a money-spinning hulk embraced even by those people not previously interested in networking sites.

Why? A vaguely articulated promise of networking (with associated, although hard to quantify, benefits); and a simple, conformist model of profile presentation. Late adaptors find Facebook's predictable template and business networking associations appealing; the younger demographic like it because it's achieved critical mass in terms of the numbers of users - everyone's on it.

I now neglect my Myspace profile; in fact it exists solely these days to direct people to my Facebook. I'm not sure why I've migrated. In fact I'm not sure why I use social networking at all. Often I think about deleting my Facebook, although recently it proved its worth when I was hunting for a flatmate. A Facebook status update from me enquiring if anyone needed a flat netted me several leads within hours. So it has an upside.

But there's a downside, too, which is this: the more people who add one as a 'friend' on Facebook, the less one is actually able to use it as anything resembling a genuine experession of personality, thoughts, or feelings. Several work people have added me to their friends list. This means anything I post now has to be carefully considered. It's the same with family members who add me, or friends-of-friends whom I don't know very well. In fact, when I ask myself why I actually use Facebook, I can only find two reasons: the craven reason is that everyone else uses it, and the practical reason is that it's useful for staying in touch with friends overseas.

Bebo has always struck me as 'Myspace for Kids'. It doesn't seem to have a definite rationale of it's own, choosing instead to compete directly with Myspace, but with and emphasis on a more school-age demographic. Personally I feel a little creepy looking at Bebo profiles - it makes me feel old.

LinkedIn is an attempt to wrest the business conotations off Facebook and it may just succeed. It's a good business idea because it's using a Facebook like model but with a much better defined goal: to network with others in a given industry. I'll be interested to see how it progresses in terms of the number of members. Having said that, the idea of it bores me to tears. I doubt very much whether I'd use it.

Let's wrap this up with some more wisdom from Schopenhauer.

We let our golden days slip by unnoticed. A day without pain races by and we pay little attention to it. Sometimes on such days we sigh, feel bored, wonder when life will start; perhaps we even feel opressed by our predictable routine.

But we should be aware of, and inwardly celebrate, each fleeting day that passes without pain or sorrow; because at some point in the future, when we are ill or otherwise suffering (and this is inevitable), we will long for these quiet, boring, pain free days, and give anything for them to return.