What I Think

I’ll hold my hands up and admit that I don’t really get social networks. Maybe it’s because I’m a geek and I don’t do “normal” conversations. I get bored easily.

I’m good at listening to other people talk without being able to summon the interest to actually get involved. Though get me talking on something I’m interested in, and you won’t be able to get me to shut up – computers, the Simpsons, Star Gate, Star Trek, Terry Pratchett, rugby, snooker, good movies, WordPress, web design, Microsoft vs Apple, Internet Explorer vs Firefox ….^[1]

Which all goes to show that despite the fact that I work in a bar and can, if the job requires it, talk to anybody about any subject under the sun, I still don’t do social networking all that well.^[2]

Considering what I just wrote, you’ll probably find it hard to believe that I have a Bebo account,^[3], a twitter account and a Facebook account. All underused and rarely checked.

Bebo annoys me. Too many kids shouting, with bad spelling and using terrible grammar.^[4] Every time I see a comment left on a Bebo page, all I want to do is take a virtual red pen to it and mark the spelling and grammar mistakes.

Facebook annoys me because every time I log in there are 101 Application Invites waiting for me, and every one of them wants my personal information and requires me to invite 2,000 of my friends before I can participate. To me that’s just spamming and phishing, and I hate it. I really hate it.

Twitter on the other hand does have potential. Yes, posting is limited to 140 characters at a time, and you can’t embed images, or do anything really fancy with it, but that’s the best thing about it. It’s a simple idea, well executed. I think I may actually like Twitter. My only problem is that I don’t know enough people on Twitter to properly make use of it in a social sense.

So where is all of this going? Well, here’s where. Here’s a map of the world showing the most popular social networks within each country. The map is a bit small, so you’d think that Ireland would be hard to spot. Not so. Here’s a hint: it’s the only country coloured in red.

Social Networking Map

Notice anything else? It’s the only country in the entire world where Bebo is the dominant social networking site. To me that says two things:

1. Considering the quality of the content on Bebo, this country’s future is fsckd^[5], and
2. Considering the age group using Bebo, I’m not the only one in my age group who doesn’t get social networking.

Now this map doesn’t give any figures, so I did a bit of digging around, and according to Alexa, 9.5% of Bebo’s traffic comes from Ireland. (In comparison, 50.5% comes from the UK and 14.9% comes from the US – figures are correct as of 30 December 2008.)

In fact Bebo ranks as Ireland’s sixth most visited website, behind Google (.ie and .com), YouTube, Yahoo and Windows Live. In other words, it’s the second most popular non-search related website in the country. That’s scary.

Facebook comes in at number seven on the list, and Twitter doesn’t even feature in the top 100.^[6]

Does any of this have a point? Not really. I think it’s interesting to note that while the rest of the world is busy giving away their private data and helping to spam their friends and on-line acquaintances, we’re still at the stage of leaving “omg!!!!! u were so all over de plase last night. u goin out 4 de match 2morrow????? luv to ya cuz!!!” comments on Bebo.

Like I said, I don’t get social networking – maybe it’s because I don’t speak the language.

1. I just read back on that list and realised that right there is a good definition of geekness. [↩]
2. I don’t consider blogging to be social networking, as this is usually just me talking to myself. Unless I develop a couple of separate personalities, it tends to be less than crowded around here. [↩]
3. Which I “donated” to my place of work [↩]
4. Get off my lawn! [↩]
5. ”LOL – OMG! u iz de bestest” – shoot me now. Please. [↩]
6. Maybe that explains why I like Twitter – it hasn’t been discovered by enough morons to make it a site worth avoiding [↩]