I will admit that at one time, I was pretty excited about Facebook. I really couldn’t tell you how many people I had join up, but it certainly was a decent amount. There were all these cool applications to go with Facebook, all kinds of people to meet and get in contact with, so-called “A-list” bloggers would post daily about something related to Facebook…..and then it stopped.
It didn’t happen overnight, but to some people it might have seemed that way. The “buzz” about Facebook has declined significantly, and the bloggers who couldn’t get enough of Facebook have pretty much abandoned it. Traffic to Facebook has been down, as much as 10% according to some analysts. Now I have seen quite a few websites do reader surveys asking about the decline of Facebook visitations, and there are various reasons that have been listed.
I still use Facebook on a daily basis, but the excitement just isn’t there anymore. For me, I just think Facebook isn’t “cool” anymore. The application requests were cute at first, but quickly became one of the most annoying things on the internet, right up there with music on someone’s MySpace page. I think a lot of people also started asking, “what is the point of Facebook anyways?” Yes, it’s great for connecting with friends, and some networking, but what else? If I want to keep up with my friends and associates, I turn to Twitter despite the incredible amount of downtime Twitter experiences.
Is this the end of the line for Facebook? I don’t think so, but traffic to Facebook will slowly continue to decline. Profile pages are scheduled for an overhaul in the coming weeks, but from what I have seen already, I don’t think it will make much of a difference. I really can’t predict what’s ahead for Facebook, but I can say with confidence that the days of Facebook being the number one “social network” are definitely over.
Sarah Perez over at ReadWriteWeb wrote a great article today and social media, and the time spent using it by people. She took an “unscientific” poll on Twitter and came up with some really interesting responses. Check out the full article on ReadWriteWeb.
If you spend any amount of time on the Internet then I would probably bet you have be subjected to some form of talk about social networks. Heck, even here on WinCustomize and JoeUser I regularly talk about the usefulness of such networks. We have a growing group on Facebook about desktop customization, and several of us use Twitter as well.
With all these current networks, and more popping up all the time, it can be difficult to keep track of them all. I use quite a few of these networks for both personal and work use, and I wanted to share a few tips on how I manage some of the more popular ones.
FriendFeed is one of the hottest new sites around, and it’s generating quite a buzz. FriendFeed lets you keep update to date with the happening of all your subscribed friends, favorite bloggers, etc. It will pull updates from services like Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Digg, and a bunch more. It also allows users to comment on your postings, and see updates posted from your friends as well. You can see my feed here.
Socialthing! is another website that does a similar function, but I think it has a much cleaner interface. Socialting! is still an invite only service, and I do have a couple of invites to give away if anyone is interested.
TweetScan is for you Twitter users out there. It lets you search Twitter, and is a good way to find people with similar interests, or people that are just talking about you.
Twhirl is an application powered by Adobe AIR. It’s a Twitter client for your desktop, but the cool thing about this is it will also post to your Pownce and Jaiku accounts as well. It’s also available for both PC and Mac, but my personal Twitter client of choice is Witty.
Alert Thingy is another new application also powered by Adobe AIR. Instead of Twitter, this app focuses on keeping you updated of your FriendFeed feeds, and it also allows you to post messages to Twitter.
So those are a few of my top choices on how to make managing your social networks a little bit easier. If you have any tips or tricks, I would definitely like to hear how you manage yours.
If you are on Facebook, and really….who isn’t these days, then head on over and join our Political Machine Facebook group. This group is another great way of connecting fans of the game, political junkies, and anybody else for that matter.
When you are logged into Facebook just click “Join group” at the link below.
A couple of months ago we started a group on Facebook for people who are interested in customizing their desktops. We have had a great response so far, so I wanted to remind everyone again to join.
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