Of couse America has culture... much the same way bacteria has culture ;p

As for this weeks wringer. Social networking in general just never really caught on with me. Facebook is basically a glorified email alert tool for me. Send me a message, I get an email, I'll get in touch with you. 

I kind of like, twitter and do prefer it to facebook. But even that i'm not a fervant follower of.

I think i'm ready to move onto whatever comes next in social networking but my move to that really depends upon when my freinds are ready to move on aswell and i don't see that happening anytime in the forseable future because of all the time that hs been invested in to Facebook games like Farmville Mafia wars etc. ,Faacebook Groups, and the insane number of freinds they've accumulated that would be lost if they change over to a different type of  Social Networking. 

I'm not a big fan of Facebook so I'm ready to move on.  But like Kappa Master mentioned, a move to another social network depends of your friends.  Most of my friends I doubt will be moving to Google+

Is Facebook a thing of the past?  Probably not, but I think its reach is too wide.  It's like a giant octopus that eventually will grow so many arms that it won't know what one or the other is doing.   It's becoming too complex.  I rather have something simpler and Google+ seems to do just that.

Facebook has become what myspace is now. A popularity contest. So many people these days have 100's if not 1,000's of friends. I don't know anyone in life that actually could talk to that many people let alone have that meaningful of a conversation with that many people. I have to constantly block certain horoscope from friends  and farmville things from showing up.  Also, having everything open to everyone has really gotten annoying. I don't post all that much on facebook  anymore because of this. There are certain people that I want to talk to about things and having to individually invite them to the conversation especially when its more then just a few people. it's  just tedious.

This is where Google+ shines. I've only been on G+ for little over a week and have had more conversations with more people in the last week then I have had in months on Facebook.  The only reason now I'm on facebook is to chat with those who live on there and don't use some kind of instant messenger. I've been looking to move on from facebook for a while now and Google+ is the perfect solution.

Now I don't see it as competition to facebook but more twitter here. Facebook makes it impossible to have an open conversation with anyone and your friends. Twitter on the other hand does this well but trying to have a threaded conversation is just broken and really a huge pain. Pretty much if you have not seen the tweet within the last few minutes, then that replay is almost useless. This is where Google+ and circles wins me over and I have not looked back since then. 

Facebook has become the new AOL, where you have to do everything the facebook way in facebook and if you don't then to bad. They don't care about what the users think and about the people on it. 

I don't really have many social contacts to begin with (and that's not going to change!). With this small group of people I stay in touch via email and phone. Facebook offers me nothing I want, so I deleted my account about a year ago or so.

In fact, some time ago, I missed an appointment, because I couldn't find the corresponding mail in my mail account. Well, I couldn't find it, because the message was on facebook only. And of course I didn't look there, because normally I make appointments via email or phone. Damn.

Also, after some time, I just had too many "friends" (50 or so). There was always someone who wrote something on his "wall" or whereever. And 99% of this was just spam for me.

I always found it hard to decide whether someone should be my "friend" and which groups I should join.

For my "online only" social contacts (like clanofthegraywolf), there are always better possibilities to "stay in contact", like forums.

I have to admit, I will try out google+ once I get an invitation. And from what I know, it really might be better. But still, I'm pretty sure I wont use it much. I will just try it out to be able to judge it fair.

So that's more or less a "yes" to the question, commodore, I am ready to move on. Sorry, I can't answer this more directly.

I was an early adopter of Facebook in 2005. Pretty much when my school's network started. My school, The University of Alabama, was one of the first 50 schools that were added to the network after the initial expansion from Harvard.

What made Facebook distinctive at the time, was it was really an amalgam of other social neworking sites around the net. It took little bits of LiveJournal, pre-E Harmony dating sites and even integrated Hot Or Not. Actually, it was nothing more than a massive ripoff of Hot or Not.

But the thing about Facebook is it was about college. Yeah, yeah, everybody knew it was just for college students first. Though what most people don't realize is that it was truly about college. It had more to do with what Greek organization you were in, what classes you were taking and events you participated in around campus.

The initial idea for Facebook was built around the group concept. You created a group and invited people to join-- an idea that is still around, but far less stratified than it was originally. It was for coordinating study groups, finding and maintaining members for extracurriculars and intramurals, planning keggers and the like.

For instance, in my dorm, we had a group called the "Burke East Halo Club." We used the school's LAN to play Halo. It really brought a lot of people in my dorm together. But none of us would have been near as coordinated on when we'd play without Facebook.

Admittedly, people were using it to hook up with people they may not know around campus or show off their fancy relationship status with certain people, but it existed to coordinate around campus. Hell, Facebook even got me laid a few times during this time, which I like to call the glory days of Facebook.

Then, about six months after I'd joined, the site started to change. The ability to rate how "hot or not" people were was gone. The "write a note" became relatively obsolete, because you could comment on things (although this was still well before the Wall appeared). Then the "the" in www.thefacebook.com disappeared. As well as the ASCII image of Zuckerberg (which I still believe looked more like Kansas City QB Brodie Croyle).

Then you had the ability to tell people where you were, although it was limited to a drop down box consisting of "at the (your frat's name here) house," "in class," "the dining hall" or "back at home." This is really when people began the whole tracking of where people were and when I feel Facebook really began to attempt to integrate itself into lives.

Soon after, the Wall appeared, and in its own proto-capacity, really took that social integration to the next level. Not only had Facebook become the new MySpace (which I will get to shortly), but it was evolving that brand into something new. The creep had truly begun.

Now, like I said, Facebook was just for college students. To me and a lot of the people I knew, MySpace was where you kept in touch with your siblings still in high school, or your parents. At my school, it was almost embarrassing to have an account on MySpace because it was seen as "less refined" or juvenile. Almost like Facebook was made up of the "haves" and MySpace was for the "have nots."

A far cry from now, there were walls to friending people in the early days. For instance, I wouldn't have been able to communicate with Commodore and Roo, both students at UNC Chapel Hill, from my account at Alabama. The barriers were there, and these larger barriers trickled down into smaller ones, like social groups. But within the designated strata of the network you were a part of, they were essentially self imposed.

Eventually you were able to friend people in other networks, but weren't able to view members you didn't know in those foreign networks without knowing the specific university e-mail of the person you were trying to friend.

Somewhere along the line, it's almost as if Zuckerberg realized that he was going to lose a mass of people on his college-only network once they graduated. Remember, this was still when you had to have a verified university e-mail address to participate. If you went to a bigger school like me, six months after you graduated, your university e-mail became inacessible (even though I'm the only person in the history of my school to have my last name).

Zuckerberg realized that Facebook had to expand or die.

This is when he allowed high school students to join, even though for privacy rights, the two networks were kept totally separate. To a lot of people I knew, this was like a coup d'etat, or taking away something that distinctively belonged to us-- the college crowd. Groups lit like wildfire to keep high schoolers off Facebook, but it didn't work.

Soon after, the whole university e-mail problem went away, the walls between the private, designated university networks came down and other people were allowed to join. Sure, those of us who had been around since the start were upset, but by this time, we'd all graduated and were desperate to keep up with the people we knew in collge.

Then the open development and applications came. Oh God, not Farmville. Please not Farmville.

To a lot of people I know, this was our breaking point with Facebook. But what were we going to do? Go to MySpace? Hell no. We had to keep up with each other. Networking-- not the social kind-- is too important in the 21st century, and Facebook became the simplest means possible to maintain that level professional networking. We were stuck in its web. It evolved into a neccessary evil.

Now Facebook has essentially de-evolved into this vapid wasteland where there are no new ideas. Even originally, Zuckerberg's ideas for Facebook were co-opted from other places. Now, I'm not talking about the stolen code from Friendster or how everything was characterized in The Social Network (or what I mentioned before), but take YouTube's launch, for instance. Shortly after its launch, Facebook began allowing embedded video on the site. Then came the built in chat feature that integrated into the messaging system-- prototyped by AIM 6.0 (which has recently prompted AOL to completely rebuild text-based chat from the ground up).

And now with Google+ and its built-in video conferencing abilities, Zuckerberg has partnered with Skype to offer the same kind of service. Not even the ideas for the site are Zuckerberg's own, much less the throngs of people who use the site's services. When's the last time you noticed someone post a "if you love ___, repost this as your status" update? Chances are it was recently.

So I'm anxious for Facebook to die, because I have seen the site's lifespan and experienced the site's growing pains. I'm ready for G+ to get out of beta and userp the position Facebook has held for far too long.

The biggest problem is this sense of "entitlement" people have for social networking these days. Everyone will want to participate, though I do believe having designated circles will help alleviate the problems Facebook has. G+ will only be a temporary sigh of relief before it becomes a vapid wasteland itself and people will long for the next big thing.

great point there Mr. T

Though I think a lot of the appeal to Google+ is that it's invite only and not everyone is on. It's kind of how twitter was in the very early days where it was basically a bunch of tech geeks on there and that about it. Now its fill of celebrities and businesses that clutter it with useless crap. Lets just hope that doesn't happen with G+ as well. 

Isn't it interesting that the culture that Japan has had the most contact with since the war has been the US, because of the long occupation?  Some games display a sort of fixation with American culture and seem unable to decide whether they envy or loathe it - think Eagleland in Earthbound, for instance.  I think that if Japanese culture is somehow both homogenous and wacky (and I tend to agree) it's because the presence of China tends to promote a sort of insularity, for fear of being swallowed by the culture of the much larger country - and because Japan is an island (all right, a series of islands, but you know what I mean) which also tends to militate against cross-pollination of cultures.  There are similar phenomena at work in Britain (I'm British).  Some people denigrate continental European culture (and the EU) essentially because they're afraid of being swallowed up by it. 

Anyway, regarding this week's question -  social networking just bores me.  It just strikes me as an extremely efficient way to disseminate trivia and other useless information, or as a means of social climbing (I have more friends than you...look at all the exotic places I've been!...everyone's coming to my party, see? etc etc).  I don't think its what the early pioneers of the internet had in mind - Jarod Lanier wrote a good book about the ruthless commercialisation of internet space, and the concomitant crushing of genuine web individuality.  Whether it's the media constantly raving about it, or the grand claims being made for it's massive importance (everytime you say "twitter revolution", a librarian dies), I'm put off by the breathless hyperbole.

I write as a pathetic hypocrite who has a facebook profile... Pity me.  That said, yes, I am ready to move on from it.

PS I don't have problem with long wringers.

 Figures I'd join up on a Weekly Wringer that I'm completely unqualified to talk about :)

I'm something of an anomaly in that I don't have a Facebook account, but I'm a little put off by how huge Facebook is and wouldn't mind seeing some smaller, maybe more specialized alternatives. I think that if everyone you've ever known is on facebook and you have 1000+ 'friends' it all becomes white noise and you aren't getting any meaningful interaction with other people.

There's also the fact that it can get a bit weird when your friends, family, co-workers, boss, etc. are all on the same social network, because in person I don't act or talk the same way for all those categories. A little niche partitioning would be nice, and maybe new social networks could provide that. Perhaps xkcd said it best about Google+

       "On one hand, you'll never be able to convince your parents to switch. On the other hand, you'll never be able to convince your parents to switch!"

I hope this post actually made sense, I'm not always skilled at getting my point across in comment form.

I'm ready to move on from Facebook, but honestly it's not for the next great thing.  I want to move on full circle past Facebook and back to life before I knew what my friends were doing at every single moment of the day.  I think I've outgrown status updates, and meaningless info on how many Ville's they've Farmed, and I don't think the next social network is going to convince me to move to it.  I just need to live a life again where people call each other on the phone (from HOME), or share photos with people when they come over to visit, or what have you.

I know there's the arguement that it does so many wonderous things, but I just don't need it anymore.  If I really wanted to connect with people from high school, I would have kept up with them since high school.  Having 400 friends I don't talk to is meaningless.  'Friending' sisters and brothers of people I went to the house of a handful of times as a kid and they remember me is pointless.  They don't need to see pictures of my opening my Christmas presents.  I didn't even rememebr their name to begin with until I looked at our common friends.

I think the problem I have with any Internet sensation is (and I hate to phrase it this way) that it's fine and dandy until idiots figure out how to use it.  It then degenerates.  EBay actually used to allow feedback for anything, even non-eBay transactions because people would respect one another.  MySpace wasn't about graphics so gaudy you can't read text.  Facebook's headed the same way, with people calling their bosses names when they're on their friends list.  As said above, Twitter used to be a sensible place too.  Any time we get a new version of something on the net, it will undoubtedly become bloated and ruined by people who use and abuse it. 

I know it's not going to happen, but I'd much rather be done with any type of social network in the Myspace / Facebook / Twitter fashion.  I know in a way a message board is a precursor to these things, and here I am writing on one, but there's much more depth here in a conversation than I've ever held on a social network site.  I may only be 30 years old, but I miss human interaction with people I knoew over all these social sites.   Having an intelligent conversation here about something I would otherwise have with friends is fine, but the day to day should be on a personal level again.  If they're truly my friends, we should be interacting without status updates.

So, I'm ready to move on, but not so much to what's coming up.  I want to move on to the way things were.

Sorry I am so vocal here, but I have a lot to say on this subject. 

As for what Lichida said about it all being white noise is very true on facebook. I only have like 50 or so friends on there and all of them I've known in one way or another. Most people I see have so many friends and its just a cluttered mess. I don't know how anyone would get anything useful out of all that. 

That's what makes Google plus so great is that you divide up your friends ,co-workers,family, and other specific groups that you want. You can talk to a specific group or type of people and not annoy everyone else that is not interested in the conversation. 

i fucking despise social networks.

i used myspace a long time ago and I have a fake facebook and twitter account. twitter to keep up with people like you and facebook to communicate with a few people which don´t have im.

but i´m seriously pissed when i have to use twitter to get information. For example if roo is writing a message about the 16bitgems on twitter I probably won´t read it because I don´t look into the account but in my opinion stuff like that should be posted on the website itself as a news. Many "reviewers" or "gaming sites" are doing it like that and it pisses me off.I can´t understand it.(what provoked the hate was actually a german gaming site called gameone,not cotgw and the roo example is grabbed out of the air)

Why the fuck should I use facebook(and stuff alike)?

I have icq(popular in germany,seems to be not so popular in the usa,atleast from what i´ve gathered) and all my friends in there,so why should I add them on facebook? Why should I use my real name on the internet? The internet is controlled by sites like 4chan and people really use their real names on facebook?

If you want to use that stuff I´m ok with that.My opinion is "do what you want aslong as you don´t hurt anyone else but yourself" (thanks penn&teller). Another thing is that you sometimes (its getting more and more) use twitter or facebook to participate in certain things a website is doing and thats causing me to throw a tantrum.

Another thing I can´t understand is why people care about virtual friends? I mean it´s nice to have some people on the net to talk to.I use steam and Irc as mentioned before but why do I need 10000000000000000000000000000 friends? what is it giving to me? Attention Whores never had an easier time.Write something like "oh i´m so depressed...im going to kill myself because my cat died..i serious!!!" and soon a thousand people who just added you will say "don´t do it we love you" and I know its a human thing to do so (your mother watching television crying about people she didn´t even know for example...atleast thats what my mom did when watching talk shows...) but it never was so easy to get attention and play whiteknight.

yes i mad.i hate social networks and i hate what people are doing with it.

Irc&Im

Sorry if it seemed like I gave a history lesson about Facebook. My particular grievances against it required a rundown of where it was and what it is now.

Wow, so the general consensus thus far is that people are either "meh" about facebook, or they hate it.

Good to know I'm not shouting in the wilderness...

Ready to leave Facebook? :-P I never really joined Facebook. Sure I have an account, but I barely use it. I don't like social networking sites, especially ones that figure out who my family is without me even friending any of my family or putting in my correct last name. I don't want to be stalked by a database... least of all had my personal identity compromised by a database to other databases for profit (which they do). And the games are trash. If I want to hang out with my friends, I'll ask them.

Hey all, I just wanted to take the time to remind everyone that the Clan of the Gray Wolf has a new Facebook widget right on the side of the front page.  Be sure to "like" us and show all your friends just how cool we are! 

... so what's going on in this thread?

I only just hopped on Facebook because I only recently found a use for it: staying up to date on local events. Concerts, DJs, midnight shows of old movies, etc.  While I'll add nearly anyone I mainly use it to expand my reach where I am and keep up to date on things I'd otherwise miss out on.

I'm very much against the idea of social networking just for its own sake. I wouldn't even say I'm against it, I just don't see the point. My first MySpace account was left to rot until I shut it down after months of disuse, and I've shut down Facebook a few times because I thought, "let's give it a go" and quickly followed it with, "...meh."

With all the demands on my time, I'm not going to sit and waste hours poring over short messages left on people's walls while spouting off insubstantial updates of my own. That's a reason I never got onto Twitter, though like Facebook I can see its purpose it's just (unlike Facebook) I don't see the point in every bloody person having one. A site like the Clan of the Gray Wolf can post updates and links through their feed and that's great, it's a handy service, though I like to pick one service and stick with it so I use Facebook for that. (Oh the irony.)

On the gaming side of things, I wanna know how G+ will impact companies like Zynga. They may be the scourge of the hardcore gamer but they're a big part of the current landscape and like it or not they've done wonders for destroying the social stigma that surrounds adult gamers. Their whole business model depends on Facebook and while I'd imagine it could be adapted to another network I just want to know if they have any staying power or if we're going to see them drop in popularity alongside the veteran social network.

And yes, I fully expect Facebook will lose some of its userbase, but I doubt it's going to become the next MySpace. What I'd say is going to happen is we're going to have 2 or 3 competing networks that offer enough different features to justify their existence without completely overwhelming the competition. When you look at MySpace, they had nothing on Facebook. 

The site layout was a mess, its features were lacking, its customizability turned out to be its greatest flaw because people would bloat their profiles to the point your browser would freeze when you went to their page... Facebook did away with all of that and provided a novel, streamlined experience.  Now it's the de facto way many people keep in touch with friends and family and those bonds are what will keep it going as Grandma is unlikely to switch and you'll stay where she is, even if it's just to check in once in a while.

The big thing for me is privacy features. If Google+ is better than Facebook in that regard then I'm on board, no question. Facebook can only be called broken in that sense and I tolerate it because I don't have a very big friends list and I don't use it that much. If that changed? I'd be out. 

I'm going to close with another slight tangent-what about instant messaging programs? This is what surprised me with my most recent foray into social networking. I almost never use my AIM client anymore because everybody that's on my list is also on Facebook. I like having a separate client which connects to Facebook when I don't want to leave a tab idling on that page but I never utilize the actual AIM or MSN networks anymore. Do those services have a future with stuff like Facebook taking over their role?

Anyway, I'll cap this off before I ramble some more and descend into a diatribe on the good ol' days when 56k was blazing fast and everybody was having cybersex on AIM.

Before I begin about the white pages, I use a dark theme that everything is a combination of black/dark grey with a mix of green and white text. (I miss monochrome monitors.)

I don't use any type of of social networking, it doesn't interest me. The one thing that annoys me is that everything is tying into social networks or making features that let other people know what you are up to, even if you don't want them.

Example: Every now and than I browse my email settings and found a new feature called "Social features: Manage who sees my Updates" which was enabled, (when was this added?) so it took awhile to go through everything disabling everything, (WHY WAS THIS ENABLED BY DEFAULT WITHOUT ME KNOWING ABOUT IT!?) and than I remembered reading something about Gmail doing something similar where info in private emails were shared with people's contacts.

Cado, back in my day 2 gigabyte hard drives were considered as being comically vast, and 'flash' was something the lights on your modem did when the connection (frequently) cut out *waves stick curmudgeonly*

Regarding IM's - I still use 'em.  They have more bells and whistles than facebook chat.  And if I'm dating someone, I never friend them on facebook - I mean, what's the point of getting to know someone when each of their little idiosyncracies are all laid out for you on their facebook profile?  It takes all the fun out of it.

First post! Well, I picked an interesting subject to join in. Not sure if I have too much insightful information that hasn't already been said, but I'll give me two cents.

Personally, I'm always ready for the next "big thing". I like seeing the more "underground" things build in popularity, but at the same time, once those things become extremely popular, I usually like to see them usurped by another "underground" thing. Yet at the same time, I usually don't hop on these new "social networks" immediately when they pop-up because I feel like I have no reason to.

Now I'm not super huge into social networking. I mean, I have a facebook and I check it and talk to friends with it, but it doesn't go much further then that. To me, these social networking outlets need both functionality and purpose for me to be absorbed into them. For instance, when Myspace was still popular and facebook just started opening up to everyone else, it took me a while to switch to facebook. What did it was that all of my friends were going over to Facebook (not to say that I'm just a follower, but the point of the social networks to me is to keep in touch with friends that you don't normally talk to all of the time). The functionality and purpose of facebook for me was being able to chat and keep in contact with many of my friends.

But for something like Twitter, I never really got into that because it's functionality and purpose was never there for me. It functions like a system where you just update your daily life and people watch that and comment on it. It's built upon having people follow you and care about what the hell you are doing. I've always thought of it as a popularity contest, or only good for things like websites or people who are creating content (like for example, I may look at TheSpoonyOne's twitter every once in a while to see what the hell he is doing, haha).

Anyway, I feel like I'm rambling a bit. This is a giant subject that can be approached in a huge amount of directions, so it's difficult to pin-point one thing to talk about on it. But like I said, if something big and new takes over facebook (like google+), than more power to them! Down with the establishment!! (which ironically, what brings down the "establishment" always becomes the new "establishment", haha :) )

P.S., I say don't worry about a time limit on the Weekly Wringers!

Am I ready to move on from Facebook? Seems like I just got there. And I must say I mostly don't like it. I use it somewhat as an extra email and to play super-casual games i.e. Farmville/Cafe World. I've just recently started friending or liking internet reviewers I watch in the vain hope that one might acknowledge me and actually be able to have time to get to know/befriend me.

In terms of navigation, facebook is pretty difficult to sift through and even harder to edit.

I have been resistant to even getting a Facebook account - I don't like that it asks my real name. I don't like how personal it wants to get with me. And I don't even like half the relatives of mine who've suddenly cropped up on the radar.

What I do like about it is being able to communicate with a few obscure relatives I actually do like and friends who I've drifted from mostly due to not having time to chat. It's a glorified email account that's one step away from asking my bra size.

I kind of see it like a cellphone loaded with options I have no interest in and will never use. This week's question really more or less resides on "Am I even INTERESTED in social networking?" and to my great shock I've found that I'm not the social butterfly I wish I was.

I don't care... I really don't care. LOL The only reason I got on Facebook in the first place was to help a friend of mine with Fishwrangler. I've stuck around for the casual games and obscure contacts I would otherwise not have found again. So...

No. I'm not ready to leave. Nor do I really want to. It just eats up my time like everything else. When I started playin Animal Crossing City Folk I stopped playing Wild World. Why? I only have so many hours in a day and I can't spend a half hour on Wild world making sure my flowers don't wilt when all my friends are playing City Folk.

I move on when I have to, not before. I moved onto MSN and YIM because my friends moved off AOL/AIM. I moved on from social games to the ones my friends played. I'll move when I'm good and ready, not before.

so talking about it...whats your bra size?

as with you im  not very interested in the whole social network. i used to have a facebook i hade it for around 3 months and closed my account over a year ago. i agree that facebook tended to get alittle to personal at some points and for no good reason at all. im sure some people love sharing all those facts and what not with whoever but im not into it that much.

but in a better response to the question and almost a reply to your animal crossing reference (which btw was awesome great point made there with a game that i love xD) i actually moved away from facebook. mostly because i was uninterested but because my friends where playing city folk while i was playing wild world by that i mean the people i wanted to talk to were on deviantart, while i was on facebook.

Deviantart if you dont know, is a social network of artists who share their art with each other and leave comments and feedback on said art. and you have a profile page of your info and all your artwork, so basically its a facebook of artists. So like how i moved from myspace to facebook because my friends were on it. i moved from facebook to deviantart because my friends and more importantly the people i wanted to talk to were on it.

So i feel in regards to facebook there is a time when everyone will move on, it happened with myspace before it. if a site comes along with a better interface, or features that you are looking for then obviously you are going to jump ship. and why keep playing the same game while your friends are playing the new one?

I'm not sure if any of you were on Facebook in 2005, but this is how it looked shortly after launch. After the Hot or Not was gone.

These were the days. Back when Facebook was worth it. No, this isn't me. I didn't have the foresight to screenshot this stuff.

I'm ahead of the curve when it comes to social networking. By the time I heard about MySpace, I was already over it. I created an account just to keep in contact with people back home because I was a Marine stationed in Japan (best and worst 2 years of my life spent there) and I didn't have everybody's email address. Hence, MySpace was convenient for that and nothing more.

I first heard about Facebook sometime late in 2006. I was still stationed in Japan, but knew that I would be leaving in the first few months of 2007. Facebook, as I understood it and still view it, was MySpace+. Again, I was over it by the time I had heard about it. But, again, it was a convenient annoyance. Knowing that I was leaving soon and that most of the people that I worked with in Japan that I wanted to stay in contact with were on Facebook, it recieved the same treatment as MySpace did. I created an account, linked to a few friends, and I've only ever checked it when I get an email about something I care about.

Now I will admit that I've spent some time on the Facebook games, but most of them lost my interest the same week they caught my interest. Also, Zynga is evil in game developer form. Even more so than EA. 

I'm considering created a Twitter account for much the same reasons as I did with MySpace and Facebook, and it looks like that's nearing the end of its life as well. So I'll create a Facebook+ account, which sounds like it will be Google+, and I'll create an account on whatever the + for that is, but none of them are likely to get much of my time. Let's face it. Beyond the "networking" part, everything else about social networking is just silly and a waste of time. 

To answer the question, yes. I think that Facebook is currently dead on its feet, even if there are a bunch of people who don't realize it yet. Whatever is coming next will rise up, kick Facebook in the face, and then curb stomp it into the decayed remains of MySpace. Twitter will fall too, but I think it may stick around a few more years before it dies and gets replaced completely.

Seriously though, does anybody use MySpace anymore? Is the website even still up? I haven't gotten any emails from it in a long time, so it's safe to say that nobody I know is still using it. And my messages on Facebook are becoming few and far between. So yeah, Facebook is already a zombie waiting for its headshot.

So I'll create a Facebook+ account

You know FacebookPlus was a joke, right?

Hi! First post, been watching the 16-bit gems and was directed to this video by the magic video fairy that puts other videos at the end of the video you're watching. Wish I got on earlier to remark about the Japan video, oh well.

So, social networking. Personally I'm in what's always seemed to be the minority of people that don't like and refuse to use social networking, maybe it's my inherent anti-social nature, or my perception that it makes the internet seem like work, or the fact that there's plenty of other stuff to do on the internet that seems like more fun (and less work). But yeah, I made a MySpace account back in the day and it was unpopular before I had a chance to go back and update it, never got into Facebook, might try Google+ for shits and giggles but I doubt I'll get hooked.

To me I always saw Facebook as a lazy man's personal website, you had it to express yourself in the nameless masses of the internet without having to do much work besides plugging information into a set template. Pictures go here, insightful commentary on the roundness of Cheerios goes here, ooo look you can pretend to kill people here! I mean people will even pay to have other people personalize their Facebook page for them. And you know what that's good for them, they got their play money, their play house, play land, play friends, it's a big world of make-believe! It is interesting to see how it's evolved and changed over time, and how social media is being intergrated into all different facets of life. But that is the trend of technology, personally I can't wait to have a coffee pot that needs an ethernet cable so it can automatically tweet when you have a cup of coffee. Of course that's just exaggeration, it'll have wi-fi.

So down to the question at hand, will Google+ replace Facebook? Yes, eventually. Google is getting into everything, it's bound to take over social networking, it's the next big thing. Won't be immediate, Facebook probably has a few solid years left in it, but that's just the way people are. I mean look at some of the other comments, see all those people that said they'll switch if their friends switch? Wanna bet a lot of their friends say the same thing? Now you get 1 trend-setter in that group that says F-it I'll try Google+, all their friends will hop on the bandwagon. And slowly the migration will occur. Now this is all dependant on one big assumption, that Google+ will be good and fill the social networking needs that Facebook does, and barring horrendous mismanagement or a complete lack of effort, it will.

As a side-note, I've always thought putting an arbitrary limit on how long a video should be is a bad idea. If you can make an entertaining 30 minute video, why artificially cut it down to 15? That isn't to say being concise and to the point isn't necessary for a good video but the content should dictate the length of the video, not the other way around.

LOL. Hmm! Nice responses. Yeah, I tend to move with my little circle of geeks, and even then not usually til two of them have jumped ship on me.

Hmm my size... Tch. Would you believe 38 D? :3