Connected

I often talk about the Power of the Internets (not to be confused with the Power of Greyskull, natch) and how things like Twitter and especially Facebook find us reconnecting with those from our past. (In a somewhat related manner, I'm about THIS CLOSE to deleting my MySpace page because really, it's lame, I check it like once every four months, and NO, Mr. Random Guido Bodybuilder, I DO NOT want to get to know you better. Really.) What I've found, though, as while Facebook is the social  network du jour here in Silicon Valley, I had a hard time explaining it to my friends whose lives don't revolve around the Interweb. (Bless their hearts, I'm kind of jealous.) They've HEARD of it, mind you, but it was difficult trying to explain what it did. "You can add applications [note: at this point, they told me they thought I was talking about job applications, which makes sense if you're not ensconced in the geekland like I am] and leave comments on people's sites and see who's married and who's dating..." I trailed off then because not only did I do Facebook such injustice to describe it that way, but really, I sounded like a voyeur. This coming from someone who's put her entire existence on the 'net for 8 years now.

So while I'm adding friends on Facebook as far back as middle school on a semi-routine basis and finding out where they live and what they're doing and mentally getting irrationally angry that we didn't have this when I planned my 10-year high school reunion 2 years ago, I'm simultaneously discovering that LinkedIn is the more prevalent of these social networking apps, if the fact that Daisy's Mom and MY OWN DAD are both on it. What? Ed Sabala on LinkedIn? What has this world come to!? And why, preytell, didn't he ADD ME? Thanks, Dad.

Also, though LinkedIn only provides you with minimal details (read: No, you can't find out if that dude you smooched once in the Sig Ep basement is still single, though if he lives in the South and is still that hot methinks the answer is probably 'no'), you can see that your friend who used to run through the streets of Chapel Hill butt naked screaming "Look at  my wienie!" is, in fact, a lawyer.

LinkedIn: Proving that it's a good thing that YouTube wasn't around when we went to college.

Comments

[Jesse!]

Gah... I just watched Mark Z. completely and perfectly muster all he learned in that public speaking class* to perform his keynote address to FB app developers. According to him, his "worth" and his horrible North Face jumper (as the Aussies fittingly call it), Facebook has invented the following:

* social networking sites
* connections to REAL PEOPLE!
* society
* the internet
* and the interpretation of massive page views as NOT the result of thousands of confused users trying to figure out how the hell to use FB who have resorted to random clicking

It's no wonder Linked-in seems to have more main-stream appeal... esp. to the "older" generation... since I don't know, it helps you get a job and keeps it simple.

* just kidding, he never took that class!