If, on Facebook for example, one uses the site to connect with a sensible amount of friends from the past and present, then the site is a very useful tool to visit every so often (about once a week on average) to check for updates.

However if the goal is to just add an insane amount of people as friends, when in reality most of them are strangers, and spend most of every day on the site taking quizzes, then boredom is sure arrive pretty soon.

The quality of user satisfaction of sites like Facebook is, I believe, only as good and valuable as the genuine number of ‘real’ friends people add to their account profiles. It’s always more interesting to communicate with people who we actually know, rather than have a list of ‘friends’ who don’t really even know who we are.

Using these sites for escapism from the real world eventually results in a hunger for the very world people try to escape from.

If, on Facebook for example, one uses the site to connect with a sensible amount of friends from the past and present, then the site is a very useful tool to visit every so often (about once a week on average) to check for updates.

However if the goal is to just add an insane amount of people as friends, when in reality most of them are strangers, and spend most of every day on the site taking quizzes, then boredom is sure arrive pretty soon.

The quality of user satisfaction of sites like Facebook is, I believe, only as good and valuable as the genuine number of 'real' friends people add to their account profiles. It's always more interesting to communicate with people who we actually know, rather than have a list of 'friends' who don't really even know who we are.

Using these sites for escapism from the real world eventually results in a hunger for the very world people try to escape from.

If, on Facebook for example, one uses the site to connect with a sensible amount of friends from the past and present, then the site is a very useful tool to visit every so often (about once a week on average) to check for updates.

However if the goal is to just add an insane amount of people as friends, when in reality most of them are strangers, and spend most of every day on the site taking quizzes, then boredom is sure arrive pretty soon.

The quality of user satisfaction of sites like Facebook is, I believe, only as good and valuable as the genuine number of 'real' friends people add to their account profiles. It's always more interesting to communicate with people who we actually know, rather than have a list of 'friends' who don't really even know who we are.

Using these sites for escapism from the real world eventually results in a hunger for the very world people try to escape from.

A few years ago, at my first blog conference, I noticed all these people standing around talking to one another…and I thought it was so great that so many met each other thru their blogs! Turns out most of them knew one another from other places (like f2f places), and reading their blogs was just a way of keeping in touch with each other…

Then things changed over in blogging, and we started meeting other people through our blogs. But that’s only for the adventurous…

Funny thing about soc. networking, though…I don’t see many of us meeting new people through the social network–unless it’s through another person (kinda like in blogging.) Sure, we can keep in touch better with people we’ve met once or twice. But how do we know if they really *are* reading our status updates, or comparing likes and dislikes among our various and sundry apps? We don’t. And we don’t really meet new people because all the strangers in social networking sites are either preditors or identity thieves or some other kind of person who will hurt us (or at least spam us.)

Frankly, I’ll never get bored of the Internet–there’s plenty of things to do and lots of cool people to meet one way or another. But soc. networking sites? I’ll probably get bored with them quicker than I ever will with blogging. At least on my blog, I’ve got my own really huge soapbox (and a great google page rank to boot.)

A few years ago, at my first blog conference, I noticed all these people standing around talking to one another…and I thought it was so great that so many met each other thru their blogs! Turns out most of them knew one another from other places (like f2f places), and reading their blogs was just a way of keeping in touch with each other…

Then things changed over in blogging, and we started meeting other people through our blogs. But that's only for the adventurous…

Funny thing about soc. networking, though…I don't see many of us meeting new people through the social network–unless it's through another person (kinda like in blogging.) Sure, we can keep in touch better with people we've met once or twice. But how do we know if they really *are* reading our status updates, or comparing likes and dislikes among our various and sundry apps? We don't. And we don't really meet new people because all the strangers in social networking sites are either preditors or identity thieves or some other kind of person who will hurt us (or at least spam us.)

Frankly, I'll never get bored of the Internet–there's plenty of things to do and lots of cool people to meet one way or another. But soc. networking sites? I'll probably get bored with them quicker than I ever will with blogging. At least on my blog, I've got my own really huge soapbox (and a great google page rank to boot.)

A few years ago, at my first blog conference, I noticed all these people standing around talking to one another…and I thought it was so great that so many met each other thru their blogs! Turns out most of them knew one another from other places (like f2f places), and reading their blogs was just a way of keeping in touch with each other…

Then things changed over in blogging, and we started meeting other people through our blogs. But that's only for the adventurous…

Funny thing about soc. networking, though…I don't see many of us meeting new people through the social network–unless it's through another person (kinda like in blogging.) Sure, we can keep in touch better with people we've met once or twice. But how do we know if they really *are* reading our status updates, or comparing likes and dislikes among our various and sundry apps? We don't. And we don't really meet new people because all the strangers in social networking sites are either preditors or identity thieves or some other kind of person who will hurt us (or at least spam us.)

Frankly, I'll never get bored of the Internet–there's plenty of things to do and lots of cool people to meet one way or another. But soc. networking sites? I'll probably get bored with them quicker than I ever will with blogging. At least on my blog, I've got my own really huge soapbox (and a great google page rank to boot.)