Sunday, November 23, 2008

guilty pleasure: online communities


i have a confession: i am addicted to facebook. i resisted for quite a while enduring "i can't believe of all people that you are not on facebook" from my friend ilisa every time i saw her. even after i succumbed, i was resistant to it, ignoring most messages and the idiotic 'pokes' and 'karma points' etc., but slowly, i learned how to find the value in the site though i must say, i still ignore anything requiring me to download a useless app [thank goodness people aren't using 'funwall' anymore!].

that said, it is not the first community website i've joined. i've been on mixi in japan for a few years, and when i joined that it was far more sophisticated than facebook. now facebook has evolved and surpassed mixi and i find i can't tolerate the annoying layers of approval screens in mixi to post anything, even sending a message. i thought mixi was a great way to stay in touch with my friends in japan, but it seems everyone has grown tired of the lack of innovation in the site and i hardly log onto it anymore.

now, i do realize that part of the attraction is unhealthy – it's an addiction. like all addictions, it's part laziness, in this case, laziness to coordinate real socializing combined with an unhealthy need for attention [an inevitable condition from living in NYC].

having real time communication tools on one page is a value add and it seems like gmail is adding similar tools at a good speed to compete. if you haven't tried video chat on gmail yet, download the plug in RIGHT NOW – the video and sound quality bests skype – no reverb using the internal mic on my laptop!

i also found that there are nooka fan sites on both mixi and facebook! search for nooka on mixi and "love nooka" on facebook. i'm not the moderator, but perhaps one of my blog readers can be proactive with populating that group with posts. let's see if this post makes membership on those groups grow:) are there any others i don't know about?

photo: sydney fairy by matthew waldman, 2007. collection of john engelen, australia.