I’ve felt little need these days to keep up with a public blog. Everyone is making their lives and thoughts so public these days, it seems like overkill.
I haven’t succumbed to the Twitter craze, either reading or writing.
I have become addicted to facebook – and I found in many cases that their “notes” function means I reach a far greater number of my friends than my blog would.
I guess the one thing that the blog is useful for is a kind of public meandering thought process, where your words might be stumbled upon by a random stranger… as well as for getting up writing that you want to make public – since facebook notes are still only limited to your friends, unless you want to make your profile completely public. Which would be a bad idea, methinks.
Oddly, I also feel somewhat shy about using the notes function on facebook, knowing that it is SO accesible to so many people that I know. How strange that it seems more anonymous to blog about something since far fewer people will read about it here.
So many levels of privacy in one’s lives these days, or in facebook parlance “settings”. What parts of my life do I want open to family and friends, what parts would I prefer to share with an anonymous blogosphere, which of my photos do I want everyone to see, and which do I hide away on my Picasa account so I can share them with a specific few?
Having said that, I’m finding it more and more interesting to see how my friends respond to facebook, now that it is no longer a passing phase. I think we’ve passed the mass acceptance phase and are onto the late adopters, even older folks who are finding that this is the way they’re going to see family photos or be kept out of the loop! That means that most people are on it, and the few who aren’t fall into a few categories. Those who truly are hopeless at technology. Those who truly are too busy with their lives offline. And the die-hard resisters who become braver and more isolated by the day. They seem to come in three categories, though with intersection. Those who think it would be a waste of time and find communication with friends a chore rather than pleasure, those who don’t want to live public lives (and imagine facebook being an invasion of their privacy), and those who prefer to limit their social interactions to a small number of loved ones in an old fashioned manner.
I have some admiration for all of them… though I don’t exactly relate to those feelings, and feel frustration when I can’t share my photos with them, or invite them to my facebook events.
But stay tuned (my few and anonymous readers). I do have some ideas for some blog postings, which will hopefully go up sooner rather than later.