Tech Speak: Social Networks Comparison

http://lifehacker.com/5472223/which-social-network-is-right-for-you

I read this article with interest. It showed me a few things which I didn't know about these 3 social networking websites which I used frequently. I daresay Lifehacker got their facts quite right. The image below, courtesy of Lifehacker, shows how the services fare in each category such as privacy issues and usability.

For me, Facebook is used to connect to my entire social network. This includes primary school friends whom I can't even remember how they look like (thank goodness for Facebook), secondary school friends whom I am the closest with and my other friends from Junior College and work place. As long as I see one's name and don't ask "do I know you enough?" or say "I think you pissed me off before" AND the invitation to be a "friend" was initiated by the other party, I will agree to add this "friend". FYI I very rarely invite other people
unless it's people whom I dearly miss, are really close to, on the spur of the moment, or the son of a bitch aggressively force me to and I am too nice to say "f*** you" in his face. While I wouldn't call all my "friends" friends, I do think that it is a good way to connect me to people I know, and provide enough updates to not make me forget that I once met someone like that (unless of course the person don't use Facebook at all, resulting in zero updates). It helps me to stalk people keep track of others' lives and share my views and photos easily.

Twitter, on the other hand, is more of a source of entertainment and a way to vent up my anger. I only have a few friends using Twitter, but luckily for me, they usually tweet very interesting subjects. They usually don't tweet things such as "I just drank water" or "I think my new toe nail polish looks nice". Rather they tweet things like "I just lost money during a game of black jack again" (so you know not to provoke him regarding this subject) or "my student thinks I'm totally hot" (which depending on who said that, can be totally funny). I try to be as humorous as well. Though I use it to vent my anger, I do try to tweet more interesting things like how "a weakling shouldn't attract too much attention at the gym by slamming the weights down and making too much noise" because just now there was this wussy who did that (and yeah I was pissed off because I was beside him). I also use it to talk to my friends as another form of SMS. I have no idea how people like Danny thinks that "every1 twEets rike dis keKezX". My followed and followers don't.

Buzz is still a new service. Though there is much hoo-hah about it now, I never felt that was much faults in it. I mean, yeah, you won't want every Tom, Dick and Harry in your Gmail Contacts to know what you are buzzing, but everyone has the rights to properly set up your account before using it. You'll notice that you can create groups of friends and post your Buzz according to who you want to see it. Okay, I shan't defend Google too much because I think Buzz can do with a lot of improvements with ways more than one. I do look forward to more people using it and myself using it on my cellphone soon as well.

If there's something I dislike about my social circle, it is that not many of them uses online social networking tools or email for that matter. I barely receive personal emails asking me how I am, or what we should eat next weekend (I think Google Wave will be wonderful for this). Most of my closer friends don't tweet and they don't use Facebook as frequent as I do either. They don't really blog (not public anyway) or share articles over Google Reader. Even though Singapore is advance in terms of mobile subscription, I still think that we have a long way to go in terms of connecting one another over the mobile/online networking.

I seriously think that social networking tools and services are very powerful and influential by the way. (read - http://infinitelyme.blogspot.com/2010/02/brain-storm-facebook-for-nuts.html)