Facebook preparing to beat MySpace on US.

It's becoming less-and-less 'a network for connecting real-friends to real-friends (despite distance-separating and time-passing)' and more-and-more 'a place where individuals prove their agreeable-ness by "always clicking 'yes' on add-requests".'

Sure, you're only 'supposed to' connect with "people you know"; but that doesn't flow in a Kingdom where all are one (in which we're all parts of the same machine, so--if you know where the machine's headed--you know the eventuality of why each individual part does what it does).

They used to have a 'rule' that you had to know the email-address of any friend you wanted to add, but there are ways around that!

I'm sure MOST of the people there stick to the 'people you already know'-guideline (wink-wink, nudge-nudge-nudge), but friend-adding is becoming more-and-more the way Dane Cook described becoming popular on MySpace: "I'd spend hours, just clicking."

---Uncle MythMan (http://www.geocities.com/jmythh2k5) & the Xombies Echo the Universe & GET MONEY for Discussing the Wonderful World Above & the Beauty Around Us!

I don't collect "friends" and often reject facebook friend applicants unless I know them or I know and respect somebody who knows them. I use Facebook and LinkedIn primarily as a way to advertise my writing and stay in touch with the animal protection/vegan world. The social let's-get-together, what-are-you-doing-at-this-moment stuff is just so much silly static to me. But then I'm an old lady! ;)

While I'm sure that a good percentage of its members are taken to displaying TMI about themselves (Future Identity Theft Victims of America, Internet Division), there are those of us who see value in using either site strictly for the purpose of aiding our writing careers. In that sense, Facebook is a tool and that's all.

Xomba is a true writing community.

JOIN US IN TOASTING YOUR FUTURE SUCCESS!

"The social let's-get-together, what-are-you-doing-at-this-moment stuff is just so much silly static to me. "

I bet that's what lots of people said when the telephone first became widespread! (What's there to say in a "phone call" that can't be said better in a letter or personal visit?, they probably figured).

I use phones for business and pragmatic reasons, rarely socially, and I actually prefer e-mails or snail-mailed letters for social intercourse (I have aspie tendencies). It would be harder for me to communicate without the Net, so I appreciate at least some of its offerings, and certainly it's a great way of bringing people of like mind together for political/social/etc. causes. But noisy, intrusive phones, particularly cell phones, as far as I'm concerned should be legally designated as just for emergencies, and people who are having loud, meaningless, inane chats with their friends in public places should be fined.

I compare the online social-nets with 'clubhouses,' as I imagine people compare the phone sometimes---a way to catch-up/keep-caught-up with friends, making their happinesses a part of your happiness.

In that way, social-networks allow both the permanency of correspondence conversations AND the immediacy of phone-conversations!

---Uncle MythMan (http://www.geocities.com/jmythh2k5) & the Xombies Echo the Universe & GET MONEY for Discussing the Wonderful World Above & the Beauty Around Us!

As a bodisattva, you should get that! ;)

Maybe that's the difference between a 29 y.o. and a 59 y.o. You're happy (I assume) with the instantaneousness and speed of social networking, while I, in contrast, enjoy solitary walks and stopping to smell the roses, as somebody else has mentioned, and the hell w/answering the phone or checking my email or snail mail or the social sites until I'm darn good and ready for it (although my email eventually beckons, and I do enjoy that). The point is that it'll all wait, and after all, everyone achieves the same motionless, incommunicado state in the end, no matter how obsessively social they are now.

Think I'll go out and wade through the white stuff w/my dogs now, just for fun . . .

-a little gratuitous and instantaneous veghead-osophizing on a glorious white "snow day" in Santa Fe

When I said 'permanence of correspondence,' I didn't mean "correspondence engraved on diamond plates"; I meant permanent in the sense that--if nothing unimaginably destructive happens--your message to them or their message to you will exist for as long as there's a machine hooked-up with the system!

---Uncle MythMan (http://www.geocities.com/jmythh2k5) & the Xombies Echo the Universe & GET MONEY for Discussing the Wonderful World Above & the Beauty Around Us!

You know me, always perverse.

Hope you have a fab-u-lous (temporary) Tuesday even if you don't have pretty snow to ogle like I do.

... there are also people who persist in expecting evil from any who speaks a perversion, even if that passing perversion is only 'an imagining of what could be if one were evil,' some people will hold you to that 'evil' even if it was NEVER your intention.

Better to explain yourself fully than to risk misinterpretation.

---Uncle MythMan (http://www.geocities.com/jmythh2k5) & the Xombies Echo the Universe & GET MONEY for Discussing the Wonderful World Above & the Beauty Around Us!

"Better to explain yourself fully than to risk misinterpretation."

But misinterpretation can be fun sometimes! and can lend a person an aura of mystery. It is all a part of life's rich pageant, as that famous philosopher Mr. Clouseau would say.

thanks for the comment.

thanks for the comment.