October 10, 2005
I Used to Think I was Plugged In
I tend to think I'm pretty near the cutting edge in the online space. I blog. I have a blog. I'm online at least 4 hours a day. Hell I my job is working on the web. I felt pretty confident I'm in the know, until I saw the interview Kareem Mayan did with 5 Teenagers (via Signal vs. Noise).
Until today, I had never paid more than a passing notice to MySpace.com, but every teen interviewed and a large part of their friends use the service every day. So I signed up to check it out, and what I see actually pushes the edge of my comfort level online. I think that means I'm officially getting old.
MySpace.com
I logged in and started browsing around and found myself in the equivalent of personal billboard land. Everybody has their own space (linked to "friends" ala Friendster), and more importantly this is the space they come to talk with their friends after school.
There's no real lesson here, just an observation that even in my time on the web, people 10 years younger than I are eminently more comfortable putting their entire life online and sharing it with their friends. The fact that more of my family has found their next girlfriend online, and when asked my coworker told me all of the differences between livejounal, myspace, and zengo and why she prefers livejournal (they have a "circle of friends" feature allowing you to restrict entries to your closest friends) shows the web has reached a new level of acceptance in society that's beyond mine.
- Posted in:
- Nonsense
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