SteveStreeting.com

There’s one problem with having a relatively public presence online, even in such a niche that I’m in, and that’s how to deal with unsolicited friend requests. I’m a happy user of LinkedIn, I have a Gamertag you can see on the right hand side there, and I’m also a reluctant and infrequent member of Facebook. As well as letting people who know me connect, it also means that on some occasions, I get friend / contact requests on these systems from people I’ve never heard of before. In the case of a Gamertag in particular, I’ll sit there trying to figure out whether I know the person or not, then agonise about whether I should just reject it (causing potential offense), initiate a ‘Who the hell are you’ discussion which might end up that way anyway, or worse open a dialog with someone I wish I hadn’t, or just accept on systems I don’t care so much about because it’s less hassle.  I’ve gravitated towards ‘reject’ as a default response now.

Here’s a tip: if you want to connect with me or anyone else on an online system, at the very least email me to introduce yourself first, or include in your friend request why we might know each other already, or have something in common. I’m fully aware that I ‘know’ far more people than I realise half the time, since I talk to people every day in forums etc via the obscurity of nicks. And if we haven’t spoken before, that might be ok too; I like ‘meeting’ new people, but you really have to talk to me first.

Just firing a friend request at me with no introduction is akin to throwing your business cards at random strangers in the street; it’s just not polite. Going through introductions might seem old fashioned in today’s fast-moving world, but it really does break the ice and makes the difference between a genuine friend request and a ‘stalking request’.

I’m a bit of a grump when it comes to a lot of the Web 2.0 startups of recent years. I still dislike Facebook – originally it was just an in-principle reaction based on their rather irritating child-CEO and his ability to attract vast amounts of investment based on a business plan made entirely of arm-waving and wet tissue paper, but now having used it for a while, I dislike it on its own merits. Even with my relatively small friends list it seems dedicated to the task of swamping me with as much useless information, stupid applications, and other such nonsense as it possibly can. Occasionally there will be a nugget of something in there, but it’s drowned in so much crap it’s hardly worth the effort to filter it. Sure, it allows me to keep up with the activities of ‘friends’, but in a much more shallow and sterile way than actually meeting them or talking on the phone/skype/in-game chat. Anyone who thinks Facebook is a good way to develop actual friendships is deluded. As a supplement for real-world or voice meetings (e.g. arranging get-togethers, sharing photos etc), I can see the utility, but I attest that it’s really not even the most efficient way to do that, what with all the junk on there. So generally, pass.

LinkedIn I like, because it sticks to the point. Every business person needs their Rolodex, and that’s what LinkedIn is – a business tool. It doesn’t claim to be central to your life, or that you can build / sustain real friendships there or other such twaddle. The focussed nature of it means there’s less noise, so it’s easier and quicker to get what you need. Contacts there are not personal, they’re a reference for it you’re looking for work, a contractor, a partner etc – which is appropriate for the medium in a way that personal relationships are not. I don’t feel the need to constantly update it or prod my contacts, or keep track of all their statuses; it just does what I need and gets out of the way.

I’ve avoided Twitter because again, it just looked like a way to pour time down the toilet. It seemed like blogging without the in-built filter that says ‘is this worth blogging about’?. Besides, I already actively participate in forums, mailing lists, blogs etc – I really didn’t feel I needed yet another dimension to have online discussions in. And I don’t really want to tell the entire world what I’m doing at any one time – I strain out the small number of actually interesting things already and post them up on this blog, and the rest of the minutae rapidly decreases in value the more degrees of separation away from me you get; so in fact real-world communication works far better as a filtering mechanism for that. Clay Shirky described why information filters in the real world have historically done a much better job with these kinds of things.

However, I decided to open a Twitter account anyway, but only for a very narrow subset of ‘what I’m doing’ – that is, what I’m currently doing in core Ogre. Obviously I blog about that sometimes, and I post in the forum for things that people need to know about, and keep the roadmap on the wiki up to date, but sometimes there are low-level things that don’t warrant that, but people are still interested in. I used to use IRC for this, but over the years drifted away from it, as it was too time consuming to loiter in channels for extended periods looking for topics in real-time, and people just bombarded me with questions all the time anyway so it was a little too much like hard work. So, for things that don’t warrant a blog or forum posting, I’m going to try to keep Twitter informed. There’s also a widget on the right there.

The focus will be kept deliberately very tight – so nothing about my other work commitments, personal life etc are going on there. If any of those things merit comment, they’ll get a more considered entry in my blog. Consider this a sort of ‘pre commit log’ of sorts! If I continue with it, anyway…

I consider LinkedIn to be one of the few genuinely useful things to come out of the whole Web 2.0 gold rush, since it’s a business-oriented, generally ‘fluffless’ site (if I see one more virtual gift or stupid time-wasting Facebook application, I’ll lose all will to live) – as such I actually do use it fairly regularly. I finally got around to creating an OGRE Group – feel free to join if you’re a professional OGRE user / contributor. I use LinkedIn to remind me who I can refer OGRE-related jobs to, so it might be worth your while

To my everlasting disgust I finally caved in and signed up to Facebook today. My singular reason was that a friend of mine has just moved to North America (to complete his years-long transition to the dark side) and he’d stated his intentions to publish most of his personal stuff there rather than blogging about it, so with much grumbling I now have a placeholder account to let me peer into that little den.

Now that I have my own account rather than peering quizzically at other people’s (over my horn-rimmed spectacles perhaps, as is implied when people hear I don’t use it), I still say Facebook has so few new ideas that it’s absolutely criminal that it’s valued so highly. It does the job sure, in a vaguely pedestrian way, but I see nothing more than a few tiny refinements on what everyone else has already done a ton of times before.  I still reckon it’s on borrowed time until someone else does something sexier and the student population move on to the next fad – just like they did the last 2 or 3 times. I’ve lost count of the number of social networking sites I’ve been invited to over the years (since about 2003/4 when they started getting popular), and after having gone through temporary membership of a few by 2005/6 I just got totally just bored with the whole thing. Now that I’ve finally joined Facebook, I’m fully expecting one or more of my friends / family / contacts to invite me to join the next thing that ‘everybody’s using’ in about 6 months – that’s normally how it works. Yawn. I certainly can’t be arsed to obsess over the content of my profile all over again. No, I’ll stick to LinkedIn where I can actually derive some (small) tangible business benefit, and my blog which I control and is thus doesn’t have to be moved / recreated every time fashion changes. And no, I don’t feel the need to start twittering, we all know where that can lead.

But the thought of being a part of something that that pompous, vacuous git Zuckerberg benefits from – ugh. I think I need a shower.