Facebook, Twitter, Now Yahoo…Oh My!

The internet is becoming crazier.  It used to be enough way back when to simply put down the pen and paper in your hand and instead type out a message to a loved one or friend and with a click of a finger on a button, voila’ Email.  Then, that was no longer enough and like everything else, Email became too slow…too cumbersome.  We needed to talk now and so, “chat” and “IM” were born.  Now, it’s Facebook, Twitter, and now Yahoo…Oh My!

It’s been said that the blogosphere is killing the print media journalists.  College educated writers who banged heads on a sidewalk so they could get their photos next to their articles.  So they could get their opinions, their views, their words…read by the masses.  Where journalists had accountability a hack blogger needed none.  No governing body for slander…good luck proving who “Iwriteinmyundies233” is.  Not all bloggers were born of the “take it to the extreme” idealism.  Some, myself I like to think, took the moral route of self-governing our own accountability.  Instead of blatantly throwing someone under the bus for laughs and kicks and “diggs, duggs, barks, and hypes”, some of us decided to use our own self-respect as our tools for expressing our opinions and beliefs.

Like all things however, it was no longer enough to simply sit at a keyboard and type out an opinon on the latest NFL player busted for drugs or the new daily change at head coach for the Oakland Raiders, like Emails, it was more important to get the news now, and get the news out there now.

“Real” journalists have long moved from paper print to online articles.  For one, to counteract the blogosphere who could take a blurb of news and break it immediately while the local media writers were still driving back to make their deadlines.  Those same media writers have now taken an interest in yet another tool that normal every day folks have been enjoying for awhile.  Non-personal messaging.

Bloggers use Twitter, Facebook, and a slew of other sites to simply RSS feed their articles to those sites, then the “followers” get to read the headlines of those articles.  But when is enough enough?  I can understand why guys like Omar Kelly of the Sun-Sentinel “tweet”.  Getting the newest and juiciest breaking news to his readers before every blogger can find out and beat him to the punch makes sense, but when does it all end?  Not for guys like Omar, but for guys and gals, like you, me, and others?

Is it enough to visit Twitter once a day to say what it is I am doing right that second?  Now I can do all that from my phone.  Isn’t it the same thing I do on Facebook?  The same on MySpace?  Why do I need to do it on Yahoo as well?  I used to Email friends, “Hey Bob, how’s it going?  Hope the family is well…” it was personal.  It was a way to stay in touch.

Now, my life seems to look more like this:

"“Hey Bob, I just joined facebook…follow me over there”  Bob joins Facebook and that is the last time that I talk to Bob about anything that means anything.  But at least he gets to read what’s on my mind.  It seems like life is turning into this:Facebook: Just set up my new Yahoo Profile account…make sure you follow me over there.then on to Twitter: Just to let everyone know, I am now also on Yahoo Profiles so follow me over there.then on to MySpace:  Just let everyone know on Facebook and Twitter that I’m also on Yahoo.on yahoo: Hey everyone, glad your following me on my new Yahoo Profile…this is so cool.back to Facebook: Just told my friends on Yahoo that I was glad they were following me there…better go “tweet” this."

Get the picture?  It’s total redundancy in my opinion.  While I try and figure out how exactly to type a message on a little 2×2 phone screen using a pop-up keyboard on the touchscreen, how the hell am I supposed to honestly keep up with 4 different social sites, remember the passwords for each of them, and actually find something that is interesting enough in my life to actually give a rats ass to share with everyone I know?  I mean do I really think so little of my friends to believe they really care that I went to the grocery store and bought bananas for .79 a pound?

As far as this site goes, by the time I made the rounds to each of those sites to write a 30 word or so blurb about an article that I wrote here, you could have already read it.  Do me a favor, simply subscribe to my RSS feed  http://feeds2.feedburner.com/Phinphanatic.

Suddenly, I miss writing letters…oh wait, nevermind just emembered the price of postage stamps.