EightBlack.

I want to talk about Facebook for a sec.

Maybe its me. Maybe I’m too old. I just dont get it (ok, I’m 40 - so sue me. Or stop laughing).

I was talking to some folks last night at MODM4 at Riverland. Incidentally, my mate Dave Sharry has done a great job with Riverland. The atomosphere is just great and even on a mild winters night in Melbourne, they’ve done all they can with an abundance of heaters and big, PVC umbrellas. Davo is great at attention to detail.

Here’s a picture of me with the Gabriel brothers from MyLiveSearch (look at the back of the room, thats me on the left, beside me is Rob Gabriel the smart bastard behind MLS and his younger brother, Mark beside him). More on MyLiveSearch later.

Back to Facebook.

I was talking with 3 people who I had not met before, 2 of whom quickly became apparent to even me, were a couple. They met on Facebook. The girl said that initially she thought the guy who she was now dating was a bit of a wanker because he had a profile on MySpace and also on Facebook. But then she said something that made even me feel a bit awkward.

She said, “but I decided to poke him”.

“Excuse me….?”

“Yeah, I poked him….” She smiled wrily knowing full well what a silly moron I was.

“Really” I said, wondering how I might be able to do the same without my wife finding out…

Apparently, poking is like winking online, giving someone a nudge. It indicates “oy, I want to talk with you”. Or something like that.

I excitedly went and logged into my Facebook profile, but sadly there are only 2 girls and 1 guy in my “friends” area. One of the girls was a bridesmaid at our wedding and now lives in London. I didnt have the courage to “poke” her. I thought she might ring and abuse me or something.

Anyway, when I was driving home tonite, one of the news stories talked about how the number of Aussies now on Facebook has grown by 200% or something equally impressive in the past few months. Apparently, subscriber numbers globally on Facebook now exceed 32 million. A mere pittance compared to Old Man Murdochs MySpace - which allegedly has 200 million plus.

The MySpace interface is like a teenagers bedroom - a bloody mess. And profiles are a mash-up, but not in the Web 2.0 sense of the word. It gives me a freakin’ headache just looking around at how some people have butchered their personal “spaces”.

2 of the young guys who work with me dont have a MySpace profile (or a Facebook one). They’re nerds so its probably a little understandable. Our new Account Executive does though. They were all laughing at me today in the office as I was trying to work out this whole “poking” thing.

Call me old fashioned. But I’d rather pick up the phone. Especially if I wanted to talk with someone.

I dont know what it is with the 18-24 year old demographic that has forced them to go off and create another cyber language. There’s SMS or text language, there’s IM language, there’s email language. Abbreviations of all kinds. Psyuedonym’s that drive you crazy.

Here’s a random question. Do you reckon there are more chicks on social networking sites than guys? Probably makes sense that there are for a whole host of reasons.

All I know is the social networking is here to stay. Period. Corporates are trying to hunker down the company networks and ban their staff from using or accessing social networking sites during business hours. Its fruitless. And pointless in this day and age. Let em network their hearts out is all I say.

After all, someone has to teach old pricks like me how to use the damn things.

PS. My Facebook profile is here. Poking is encouraged. But be quick. Before my wife finds out.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, August 4th, 2007 at 12:11 am and is filed under Facebook, Social Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.