DISQUS

Zakk Forchilli · 1 year ago

Well I'm not sure about online services like social networks, but i would assume. My father met his present-day wife on MSN a few years ago. She flew from Australia to marry him. I was amazed when i grew up and understood it.

Andy DeSoto · 1 year ago

Wow, that IS pretty amazing! It's stories like this that give me hope, I think. Guess that just goes to show that you can find friendship or love anywhere, in real life, online, or elsewhere.

cool · 1 year ago

I've found, since joining Pownce last summer, that you can make valid connections online. It seems to me that they develop over time and happen when you've shared ideas and opinions across a range of topics. These need not be super personal, but they need to offer variety. As you get to know Joe, he's not just the guy who builds Web sites in Jakarta. He also listens to jazz and Goth (who knew?), reads British mystery novels, volunteers at a Turtle sanctuary and prefers coffee to tea. All the little details add up over time to paint a picture of the person, just as they would in the real world.

I found this much easier on Pownce than I did in the old Usenet News days because we weren't in a topically focused community. Sure we nerds found one another, but we also posted music videos, links to articles, and photos of what we ate for lunch. If I had been in alt.html.webmaster or some such it would have been all Web talk and a lot of bickering about who knew more about what.

This sort of development is harder on Twitter and Plurk because of the 140 character limit and the speed at which the streams flow. You can share information, but it is hard to have a long conversation there. Yet sometimes information sharing is all you need. Perhaps you don't need to understand Joe fully to know that he is a good source of info on social media. If you want to know Joe better, then I think the multiple network solution does make sense. Form the bonds in the spaces that allow for breadth and depth of conversation then cement them with Tweets, Plurks, etc.

Tangentially, I think these cross-service alliances also build a greater sense of community. Many of the people I know on Pownce are also friends on Twitter, FriendFeed, Plurk, Flickr and Facebook. It's like a roving Internet village, wherever I go I'll find a familiar face.

Andy DeSoto · 1 year ago

I like that analogy, the "roving Internet village." But at the same time I wonder if things would be simpler and no less rewarding if we were no longer net nomads, so to speak; although it's nice to see what you're up to on the sites you mentioned, it'd be a lot easier to hunt and gather your content, updates, thoughts and more if everyone was a little more centralized.

But I guess that's never going to happen, is it, unless aggregation services such as the (new!) Socialthing! basically make all social networks different perspectives on the same relationships. But maybe that's a discussion for another day.

I also like your observation of the short-form status-update type networks as the nooks-and-crannies fillers. A lot of great ideas here, thanks for commenting!

Ultra Online Marketing · 1 year ago

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