Hi all, you may or may not (I'm betting on the latter) be familiar with me, my boy-ish and unassuming charm, or my dashing smile, but technically I've been a GOG'er for over a year now (YAY!) and have never been very active on the forums (chalk it up to my over-anxious nature and tendency to overuse the already overused parentheses) so I thought since this is always a pleasant place to visit I would try and "assimilate" if you will. Maybe we can be friends (YAY! ...?). Anyway the question at hand, and do forgive me if it has come up before but as the topic says: Social Networking: Do you do it? Facebook or Twitter... Myspace(?) if not or if so, what are your thoughts? Pro's-Con's? Let the (more or less, we'll see how this goes) stimulating conversation begin!
edit: As an interesting sidenote I just found out that the creator of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, is an Alumni of my college

I like twitter and am friends with lot's of GOGers on that front. I also us last.fm and just joined the GOG group.
I also like facebook but I keep that separate from gog. Maybe I'll make a captfitz facebook.

a Fitzbook?

I've never used Twitter, but I do use Facebook. There's far more to do with it, it seems.
I am currently a level 24 farmer on Farmville! lol I'm a sucker for any game in which you level up really...

I don't. No twitter, no facebook (Wife loves them though), just an e-mail account i check seldomly (and i got an invite for Google Wave but so far I'm not that impressed). I'm not overly social, though I'm not antisocial either. I used to have ICQ but there comes a point when having people interrupting me to chat got annoying instead of entertaining, since I was usually already entertained doing something else on the computer. Then again, I'm the kind of guy who can entertain himself solo, be it drawing, reading, gaming, writing or creating something, instead of the kind of person who needs a friend to cure him from boredom ( I have friends like that, it's just ingrained in their personality to be this way).
Oh, and it took me ages to get myself a cellphone. When i was told I was needed for an emergency and couldn't be reached, I figured a cell phone had it's uses but till then it didn't feel like something i really needed.
I guess social networks is for people who like to share, have the drive and find the joy in doing so, but I'm quite happy not bothering with any of that.

Yeah I'm basically the same way, I've got a facebook thing more to see other people's photos than anything else. I loaded twitter on the xbox once just to see what the interface looked like but am sure as fuck never going to use it.
I also took forever to get a phone, about the only reason I did was to arrange transport from uni. I was recently unable to afford phone credit for 3 months and I was inconvenienced by it once and even that wasn't so bad because instead of answering a question via text message, I got to chat to a cute girl for about 20 minutes

I understand exactly where you're coming from actually. I have a Facebook and honestly could not tell you why I have it. I've never really felt the narcissistic urge to tell everyone in my "friends" list what I'm doing or how I feel. And the status updates... oh man. It seems that they all fall in the "whiny, life is terrible", "oh I'm so bored", song quotes, or how in "love" everyone is. It all seems dumb especially when weighed with having real genuine problems to worry about. Maybe i'm too ahead of the age curve for my "friends".
That quote, sir, is awesome enough to warrant this...

Hahaha nice!

I twatter and assbook all the time.
look down there, just below the "search and +new post" buttons at the bottom of this page it says..
twatter boobtube assbook

No Facebook (or the Dutch alternative Hyves), no twitter, no messenger and it took me a long time to get a cell phone too.
When I switched jobs and for half a year had to travel 3.5 hours a day with public transport, I figured I could use 1.
I still only have a very basic one, it only offers phoning and text messaging, but that's enough for me.
I do use a few forums and e-mail to stay in contact with people.
Personally I don't see why I need to share my private life with the rest of the world nor do I feel the need to do so.

it's not about sharing your personal life (I don't like to fill out surveys and bullshit) it's about communicating with people. it's like, you've signed up for yahoo instant messenger, but your new friend uses aol instead.
do you tell your new friend to fuck off or do you join him and then use both to communicate?

1 automatically leads to another.
The amount of personal information on social network sites is huge.
You seem to have to share it in order to be "socially active".
Some people seem to think the amount of "friends" gives them some kind of status.
That situation with YIM/AIM would never happen as I would use a multiple protocol client.
In The Netherlands MSN is by far the number 1 protocol/client.
It has hardly any competition here.
As most of my online communications are internationally, I would be forced to install multiple clients or a multiple protocol client.

I actively use and support Twitter mostly for keeping in touch with a small group of friends and a large base of users which provide interesting content (be they links, retweets and opinions); using TweetDeck with a hell lot of columns (which actively depletes my API limit) for searches and stuff like that.
Contribute to several forums as well as some Flickr and Vimeo communities on which I am a paying member (I just need the space and love the services).
Been on Facebook for a little while but gave up on it because I get my "wall updates" on Twitter, have my photos on my Flickr account which is tied to several groups of photographers and keep my videos on Vimeo (as a pro user) as well as on YouTube.
Personal email is Google based and is checked every minute, work email is Exchange based and is checked every 10 minutes (we do get alerts via Twitter and SMS if something bad happens in our database farm) and school email is Exchange that is redirected to my personal Gmail account which in turn is heavily filtered.
I am on IRC from time to time as well as on IM as it is required for work and to keep in touch with a small circle of friends.
Also a sort-of-active member of Steam community and several podcasting groups.

Eff all those social networking sites. Craigslist, blogger, myspace, facebook, twitter, etc etc etc beebo, hi5, and whatever the fuck else they are.
Seriously, I hate them all with the firey passion of ten thousand suns.
To begin with, a person can use any and all of those sites acting as if they are someone else entirely diffrent then the person they are, granted you could use the internet in general to act as if you are someone else however those sites allow you to decieve your friends, family, and countless others. Kids can create false accounts, to bully their peers, S/O's can pretend to be all happy go lucky on their myspace and secretly post messages on CL about their next attempt at suicide.
It is also against operational security to post shit that hasn't been cleared. Good example, a guy drew a picture of the LSA on his FOB he was at and pointed out where the previous night's mortar fire landed, the next night after his post 3 soliders died, and a dozen civilians were injured, all because some idiot wanted to show all his myspace buddies how close the mortar rounds landed to him.......... That fucker should have been taken out back and shot.
Then again not everyone works/lives in a place where if you see a dead animal on the side of the road you have to wonder if it is an IED.
Also people who are fucked up to begin with would more then likely still off themselves even without posting *life is great* kind of messages on myspace.
Personally, yeah, im biased, and I have my reasons for not loving those sites.
Yeah I have Yahoo messanger, Skype, but I really if ever talk to people I know back home. When I do it tends to be this kind of conversation.
Them: Whats new?
ME: Eh, we had a cold MRE turkey dinner for thanksgiving....
Them:Ah, damn that sucks, so what else,
Me:Eh, not much really, ssdt,
Then:ssdt?
Me:Yeah Same Shit Diffrent Toilet
Them:So nothing new,
me:Not anything I am allowed to talk about, anything new on your end,
Them:*endless complaining about how shitty their life is... how so and so was mean.... etc etc*
Me: Oh, well.... I have to go do something....
Them: Alright, well stay safe, I'll talk to you next week?
Me; Sure, if im on base ill call,
Them: Love you,
Me ; Love you to mom....
click
Granted, the last two lines only apply when I talk to my mom, but yeah why the hell would I want to know about XYZ"s Tweets? or Status? Lol, for grins and giggles I should make a myspace page just to be like Status *Well, alive, but the rest is classified* and make a twitter thing to be like HOLY FUCK THAT VBIED POPED 25FT AWAY!
lol sorry been a really shitty day, I am in no means trying to say anyone with a twitter/myspace etc etc etc is a huge tool and should be made to go to walk across hot coals or anything.

All social networks have one huge advantage: YOU get to chose who you follow. If you don't want to follow people who tweet "I just had a turkey sandwich" just don't! You could very well put up a search for something that interests you and find some nice links and nice people who share the same interest.
In in the end it's all about you and not the other people on the network because you're the filter, not the service nor the other users.