Monday, July 16, 2007

wikis and social networks

having had some experience already with "social networking" websites such as myspace, facebook, linkedin, etc etc, i have already some conclusions about them. they are a lot of work. if you want to actually keep them updated and all that, it takes a lot of time and effort. and i don't even read my friends pages. like ever! i have friends that devote hours to reading all of their 200 friend's blogs. and i'm like, dude, i don't have time for that kind of stuff. i barely have time to post original information to my own blog. and certainly a social networking site is no substitute for an honest to goodness real life friend. i update my myspace page like once every couple of months. if i have spare time i read and fill out surveys that used to be the reserve of spammy type emails that ask you what color your toothbrush is, and what's the name of your pet, but those are just time killers and primarily targeted towards teens, b/c they also ask stuff like "who's your crush?" or "what do you want to be when you grow up?"

wikis on the other hand are think are great. i already kinda blogged about this on the library sfp blog but i like the egalitarian nature of the wikipedia. i mean, technically if something could only be created by experts, then i couldn't contribute b/c i'm not an expert in anything...i'm a dabbler. but i think i have knowledge that might be useful to other people. and certainly i'm qualified to fix typos which is what i usually do. there are the occasional trolls who like the vandalize or whatnot but trolls exist in all arenas and you just have to deal with them.

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