Journal: News & Comment

Why I'm not on Facebook

Permalinks to this entry: individual page or in monthly context. For more material from my journal, visit my home page or the archive.

Years ago, people begged me to hook up with them on Friendster. I didn't. Then it wasn't the cool thing anymore, and it was just as well.

Next came LinkedIn and MySpace. Nope, I have nothing there either.

Now it's Facebook and Twitter.

Tell you what. Go over and join Virb now. It's where everyone will be next year after they've abandoned MySpace and Facebook, so you can get a good account name now—if you can find an invitation.

Just don't send me an invite. I have this thing about trying to keep my online existence stable, so if you link to something of mine, it will still be around in a few years. If I gave you my email address or ICQ account number in 1996, or my blog URL in 2000, it still works. I don't regularly create and abandon new blogs and podcasts, or delete them and start over. I like to have an archive that persists.

Sorry if I'm weird and not cool that way.

Therefore, if you want to know what I'm up to, I have this blog and my Flickr photos. You can even subscribe to them with RSS.

It's like magic, this Web thing.

UPDATE: It didn't take me long. By mid-2007 I was on Facebook, and by the end of the year on Twitter too. I find them both useful now, largely because I know so many people there. But still no Second Life or Tumblr or MySpace. I haven't completely succumbed. Yet.

 |