I Like Social Networking

The phrase “social networking” is off-putting. It’s also a bit redundant (networking implies some degree of interaction, after all). I resisted joining MySpace for a long time, and only a few months ago did I sign up with Facebook. They have been marvelous additions to my computer time-wastin…er… researching and networking.

I’ve managed to reconnect with some very good friends of mine as well as to foster new relationships. I’ve never been one to place a negative connotation with meeting people on-line, so getting to know new people, or know old friends better, has been without stigma.

What’s funny is that people have gone so ga-ga about these sorts of sites, but the only thing new is the filtering or degrees of privacy. Back when public networking was still growing (before the Internet/Usenet broke free from educational and research facilities), there were several networks that were run over the phone system. This is back in the day (about 1980-on) when a 300-baud modem (yes, baud and bps were roughly synonymous at the time) was de rigueur, and a 1200-baud modem was really high-end. We typed on BBSes (Bulletin Board Systems) or other custom incarnations. These “boards” were pretty much what forums are today. We could usually engage “talk” programs (what’s now called a “chat”), download files, play games…basically most of the general stuff that we still do online today.

I guess that’s why I don’t rush to try the new thing. It’s basically the old thing gussied up to take advantage of the higher bandwidth that we have now. It’s still people connecting with people. I made friends through the ether back then just as I do now. I kept up with TV programs and other special interests. Just about the only thing I could not do was shop. Commerce and the various ‘nets were not considered to be compatible at the time.

I just want to mention one killer application that has never been a regular part of a lot of these sites: offline non-proprietary message archiving. See, I’m the type that likes to keep a record of all of my emails. Some of them are for legal reasons, but mostly it’s so I have some sort of record to come back to when necessary. I keep all of my written letters, why not my on-line stuff? But all of these sites pretty much treat my messaging as something that either they own or as something so ephemeral that it can simply be timed-out. But they give no options for storing it off-line. I’m sure some of my friends would rather stick with messaging within the social networks, if only for convenience, but then I lose the archive. So regardless of the other bells and whistles, I still fall back to the ol’ tried and true system of email.

So, with only that one shortcoming, I really have no qualms about this thing called social networking. I’ve been diddling with one form of it or another for coming up on thirty years, now. It possibly the single most important aspect of our inter-networked technologies. As we’ve become more mobile and no longer spend our lives rooted to our home towns, it is the perhaps the best way we currently have to not have our friends disappear simply because of benign neglect. At this point, since it takes so little real effort, there is no excuse for anyone who wants to be in touch to stay in touch.

So, YAY for social networking.