Facebook, blogs and tweets

Social Networking.

Again.

Interesting topic. I look back at my life and how it has gone and it came to me to think about how any of my circumstances would have changed if I’d had access to such things as Blogs or FB. Even Twitter?

Twitter for me looks so so dangerous. I can be very impulsive and reply too quickly in anger. Strange, I don’t do that when I’m extremely happy. So Twitter, which seems so temporary but is now catalogued and kept forever, could be devastating to friendships. Even jobs and careers. The limited format is sometimes annoying too but the few I follow seem to have it down to a tee. I prefer more permanency so as I •know• I have to be careful.

Facebook on the other hand has more to it and although you can remove posts/likes/comments you really should be thinking of them as permanent as nothing will revoke the mail updates and push notifications people set up on their accounts. The added value with the games and quizzes (if you are good and careful about the security permissions) are fun and well written. The main attraction is simply being able to know the news about your friends more easily. If you are desperately close to someone you should still be seeing them and talking “in the flesh” but, boy, you can keep up with so many people on FB. Where Twitter gets flooded easily FB is potentially more selective. Except for some of the games. [Grr]. You can register Fandom or preferences etc. So what’s not to like? Well you are exposed to friends of friends at the very least who could easily not be friendly or even claim the same beliefs or points of view. My earlier post about an FB flame shows this. Treat it like a letter.Then the blogs (sic). Well this is a form of free publishing isn’t it? An open diary? An archive? Any or all of these and more. This is probably a more technical blog than not but is widely interspersed with posts like this that, though touching on the technical, are more opinion and social science. Perhaps. Pretencous?

Blogs are more easily managed than the other two media. You alone can control the content and feedback and if you wish to erase all the content it can be done. Items published on the Internet can nearly always be recovered if you try hard enough but it is complex enough to deter all but the most prying or most technical.

So, where does that leave my rambling “what if”?

The young persons on the web are/appear to be adept at “the now” and then moving on. So the Twitter/Facebook thing comes easily and is coped with for the most part well. School yard style arguments are broadcast an last a little longer but it us easier to apologise in FB than to the face so perhaps they cool quicker too? Or perhaps the larger publication leads to greater and deeper hurt/harm?I’m nit going to leaf into a personal example and extrapolate frontier a series of “what if” conversations on how life could have been different – I could actually sen myself mad that way. The lost relationship or opportunity. The missing friend or serious incident. The spreading of good new and bad. I recommend that we spend a small amount if to understand how we’d have used today’s technology when we were in our teens and tweens. Not long though. I recommend long enough to get an understanding of where today’s generation are coming from and no longer.

Remember but don’t dwell.

As I say I said I tend to be far more impulsive with •anger• than say love or happiness. So I personally think that I would have had a hard time in Social Networking at the age of nineteen or twenty. I would have made several mistakes, probably broadcast information that was far too personal. Probably severely damaged relationship more quickly. A couple of times in my life I have created a bubble around myself. Cut myself off from everyone to allow deep “wounds” to heal. Would this have been possible today? Would that be a bad thing?

A major figure at Google said last week that the “Facebook” generation would not be embarrassed by the huge amount of information relating to their exploits in their youth that is permanently available on the Internet now. They will simply learn to ignore it and quite quite simply not care.Would I be able to do that? I doubt it. I have many regrets and many moments of joy in my life but I doubt I’d like it if anyone could search out all the comments on the topic/issues/problems.

I was such a young 19!

The real reason for this post is of course just to yet yet another piece of Tech. This time the BlogNetworking system for face book. I saw Avalon was using this and thought I’d give it a go.

I’ll add a comment with repeat to this.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone