Party Vibe

I don’t use it as I don’t have time for it as well as PV and a couple of other forums as well as work, and too many “normal” people I know are on it as well (my mum was on it for a bit!), I prefer to keep some of my “normal” life and stuff like partying separate..

I’m hardly surprised the CIA and other agencies are looking in, but the bigger issue IMO with this, murdochspace, bebo and all the other networks is that large companies don’t give away resources for free like that… they are going to be using the data for some reasons…

I also feel that in some cases computer social networks are becoming a substitute for real life friendships that you have to build up and work at.

OK its good when your friends are in foreign countries or the other side of the country, and you may not just be able to visit them, but I sometimes feel everyone is exchanging superficial stuff on these impersonal text-based networks when there are better things such as telephones (call costs are so much cheaper now!) or best of all face to face interaction…

maybe but that was happening from 1994 with the first email, newsgroups and forums without the “help” of large corporate backed “social network” websites. By the early 21st century, networking via the internet was at its peak as more people had broadband and you didn’t have to be a techie to get online.

IMO the social network websites often reduce “friendship” to a few mouse-clicks and superficial comments, whilst also bombarding users with a constant set of requests from randoms (often people just trying to sell stuff), and sticks them in a huge database that feds and marketers can trawl through as they please with the actual collusion of the “networks” corporate owners…

Fair enough I can see how they might be a way of passing the time when bored at work (until your IT department block access) or if you have something to advertise like music or events, but none of these “social networks” deliver to me anything more than I can get from “Web 1.0” or mobile phones (especially when a lot of my friends don’t even have regular net access!)

I think for some people that may be the case – but lots of others still dont/wont use these “networks” or if they are on there don’t use them regularly.

I know a fair few people who had social network profiles but gave up on them due to the time needed to keep checking/updating them, plus having to filter out the randoms and spammers, or are really just using them as a marketing resource.

There’s all the privacy implications – and the real fact that companies that run these sites are vastly overvalued by shareholders yet not delivering that much revenue (hence more pressure to sell your data to gain such revenue). Neither Myspace nor Facebook has actually made a real profit yet!

There is no such thing as a free lunch, and investors are putting a lot of pressure on all these sites to make profitable use of the data.

The sites were OK when they were just the idea of enthusiastic techies, but if you look at the sources of money thats funding them (as 665 pointed out) and read some of the small print it doesn’t look too good.

Its ironic how so many moan about government surveillance and interference in their lives, then voluntarily hand over a ton of detailed personal info to private companies (far more than supermarkets or anyone else (including the govt!) can get easily..)