I’m back from an unintentional hiatus from blogging. I wonder what percentage of blog posts are focused on explaining why the blogger hasn’t blogged in a while? I’ll bet it’s pretty high.
In my case, I don’t really have a good reason. I can’t say that my new job is to blame as my blog-life is pretty neatly distinct from my work life. In other words, I usually don’t blog from work in accordance with University of Washington Administrative Policy 47.2 (hear that, HR?!) so I generally have the same amount of time for blogging regardless of how busy I get.
I have been trying out some social networking sites, however, and tweaking my profiles has been using up what little screen time I’m willing to invest when I’m not in the office.
Some colleagues of mine are getting into Facebook, which I always thought was more for the under-25 crowd so I never gave it any attention. Plus, after having played around with MySpace and its dreadful interface and population of young, hot, horny “women” (bots) wanting to be my “friend,” I didn’t think much of the social web phenomenon. But, I was invited to join this Facebook experiment, so I created a Facebook profile.
I am reserving judgment on Facebook so far. The site is well-presented and neatly arranged. It has avoided MySpace’s ghastly aesthetic problems by preventing the user from customizing the styles of his or her profile to a large degree. Facebook has a concept of “Groups” and “Networks,” which MySpace largely lacks (AFAIK). And there is a vast array of “applications” available to help meet new friends through common musical, movie, or other interests (or to just wile away your time trying out new gadgets).
It’s somewhat disturbing, however, in that it logs and reports everything that any of your friends does — from befriending you, to installing a new app, to updating their status (“I’m at the beach!” or “I’m just chillin’!”). Of course, you can modify how much of your own activity you want reported, but I’m still a bit weirded out by its omniscience.
The whole “UW Facebook” endeavor was kick-started by a group interested in seeing how social networking can be used in professional environments. There’s a discussion going on now about it in one of the forums, but I find myself here on my own blog writing about it rather than engaging with my colleagues because it’s 7:30 on a Sunday night and I don’t really want to think about “work stuff.” I expect, therefore, that this experiment will be a non-starter for me unless Facebook can play a useful professional role during the work day — more so that email and phone calls, which seem to do the trick.
After all, the separation of personal business from work goes the other way, too.
