I have this thing about social networking sites. I really don’t like them. I see their use, I understand their appeal, they have some great functionality. I still really don’t like them. The question that then ensues, is Why Not?
Starting off, look at YouTube. YouTube is a great site, anyone can upload videos and anyone can watch videos. The potential of this site is amazing, and as such the site has taken off entirely. However, this is not without drawbacks. One big drawback is that there is a lot of worthless crap being put onto YouTube. I would estimate that 80-95% or the videos on YouTube are a complete waste of time, bandwidth and webspace. Now, there are a lot of good videos being put up on YouTube, but the majority of videos on YouTube are really not worth much in the long run. This however, is a minor complaint on my behalf, and is not by far the reason of my dislike of such social sites.
What irks me the most about YouTube is the format. Flash-based video is the best thing to happen for the web, and it is the worst thing to happen for the web. Embedding video to a website via flash, provides a nice compression and (almost) perfect compatability with any standard web browser. However, it makes these videos very hard to save to your computer. In theory, saving videos to your computer is not nessessary in the world of YouTube, because you can always bookmark any video you want, or add it to your favorites, and come back to watch it whenever you want. The problem I have with this is that you need an internet connection, and a rather fast connection at that. If I want to go home, where we have a 256 kbps DLS internet connection, (on a good day…), it’s going to take awhile to download a 2 minute movie. If I was able to save the video, I would not have to wait for it to reload anytime I wanted to watch it.
And now for a few clarifying remarks. Even though you should be able to go back and watch a video anytime you want, there is always the chance that it will get taken down, for some reason or another. Saving it to your computer can ensure that you can watch it when you want. This of course can’t be done, because if copyrighted material is put online, people “shouldn’t” be allowed to download and distribute that. Now, I know that there are ways to download YouTube Video, but none of the methods I have looked into appear to work as well as I would like.
Also, I think it’s good to say that YouTube is great for showing off your video work, and provides a way for you to show many people without having to worry about bandwidth costs.
Facebook. The other site I don’t like is Facebook. (Who decided that Facebook could be a verb, anyway, it doesn’t work, just don’t say it…) The reason I don’t like Facebook stems from two reasons, first that I am a geek and secondly, until recently I wasn’t a part of Facebook.
Now, I am part of Facebook now, but that’s a whole different story. What I really don’t understand about Facebook is how it has taken over email. Most of the people I know today, communicate mainly over IM and Facebook. I’m begining to see more events being announced over Facebook, rather then email. Is it just because it’s easier to go to Facebook then it is to start up your email client? Although, I think that perhaps the real reason simply stems from the fact that when using a web-based email client you don’t have access to people’s email addresses (I am rather fed up with some of the network policies here on Campus, but I’ll gripe about them later.)
But the main reason that I don’t like Facebook, is that I have a website. I have a half dozen websites. I try to post on them, at least weekly. (Although I’m not always successfull.) But people don’t have a reason or need to visit my website if they can talk to me via Facebook. My website becomes virtually meaningless because everyone expects Facebook to be the prime medium of communication or social interaction. No one is going to sign up at my web-blog if they can leave messages on my wall.
Flickr. My dislike toward Flickr follows in similar footsteps. Flickr is amazing. There are many photographers, be it hobbiest or perfesional that are displaying great work on Flickr. I deeply envy the macro photos of LordV and many of the flower and landscape photos by other photographers. Flickr is a great way to share photos. I have a photo blog, I want to display my photos to the world, but I don’t want to use Flickr. I’d rather use my own photoblog. In doing so, my exposure as a photographer is limited. Maybe I need to start using Flickr, I don’t really want to, but in trying to get my name out, I don’t always have much choice in the matter.
So let’s break it down. In it’s simplest form, I’m a geek. The amazing Social Network takes away from my ability to showcase my creations by creating an standard. Standards are great, standards are amazing, but in the case of these Netowrking sites, the standards are bland and uncreative. The personality of a website or blog are lost in the mass production of easy to use interfaces. Is this a bad thing? No, not at all. For the general public, it’s the best thing since the internet has been created. I will even go as far as to say that these could make my life easier or promote myself even more, if I only went about using them. But it doesn’t offer as much control as I desire.
Now these are just a handful of sites that I am choosing to talk about, mainly because they are most prevelent in my life. (I am refraining from attacking the poor design of MySpace [No, I'm not eveing going to link to it...]. The only thing that is more annoying than MySpace’s poor design is the fact that they don’t do anything about it.)
This is a great time for the internet. People are able to do more online now then ever before. The full potential of the webber-net is finally being realized and it is great. However, if you still like doing things the old fasion way, you may be in for a rough ride. Sites that don’t allow for social interaction or that don’t use the new standards of content distribution are on the way out, and many sites are adapting to make these changes.
Maybe it’s time I do the same…