More changes made to the website:

• Header Image: The header image now rotates between 14 different pictures which have either been taken by me or by my family members (my Mother and cousin, to be specific). They range from the beach to the woods – and there’s even an “Easter Egg” in there (it’s a non-New Jersey picture). Extra points if you can figure out what the picture is of, specifically.
• Streamlining: I’ve streamlined some of the key portions of each entry. For example, the comments and categories links are now located underneath the title of the post on both the front page and the individual post pages. Plus, I’ve reduced the amount of advertisements on both the front page and individual pages. Finally, some of the additional links and clickable images on the sidebars have been removed.
• Widen: The basic structure of the blog has been widened by 24 pixels. Yes, you can admit that you wouldn’t have figured that out if I didn’t say it!
• Reorganization: Some of the items posted on the sidebars have been reorganized. I’ve dissolved the “My Friends” link category on the left sidebar and moved around the “Random Quotes” widget to the top of the right sidebar. I’m probably still going to move some things around and delete some excess on the sidebars in the coming days.
• Other Changes: With all of these changes, I obviously have had to make a bunch of back round changes to the “bones” of the blog. I did some other minor changes like reorganizing how the “Contribute to JerseySmarts.com” blurb looks at the end of each post (see below) and changed the text that used to say “Read the rest of this entry” to now read “Finish reading this entry.” That may change yet again, though. Also, I lightened the background color on the left sidebar and darkened the background color of the right sidebar. I’m sure you picked up on that, though (*sarcasm*).

There will likely be even more changes coming, so stay tuned!

As for something like Twitter, I have no idea why anyone would be so crazy about that service. From what I can tell, Twitter allows people to post periodic updates on what they’re doing. If you’re “following” (i.e. “friends with”) that person, then you get updated as to what they’ve uploaded.

Really?

Is that what we choose to spend our time doing these days? How self-important must someone be to think that they need to update the world on their status every few minutes? Better yet – who has the time in their day to put up so many updates?! “I just got to work,” “My job stinks,” “Can’t wait for lunch break,” “End of the day is coming,” “Driving home now,” “Making dinner,” “Getting ready for sleep to do it all again tomorrow.”

SHUT UP, ASSHOLE! No one gives a shit about following your tweets about your mundane life!

The big competition in social networking sites seems to be Facebook and MySpace. I think what draws people to Facebook is that it isn’t as flexible as MySpace and, thus, not as potentially annoying. There is nothing more aggravating than going to someone’s MySpace page and having them blare the latest death metal song at you or some type of mopey, stupid love song. If it wasn’t for the fact that one or two of my family members are on MySpace and not Facebook, I’d delete my MySpace account completely and stick to Facebook.

I’ve begun to think about whether or not my LinkedIn profile is even worth it. LinkedIn is supposed to be for people who are trying to reconnect, but generally in a business sense. However, Facebook pretty much offers the same service. So I’m not sure if it’s worth it to keep a LinkedIn page up and running. Sure, I have some nice recommendations of my work on the LinkedIn page, but I can always get that somewhere on Facebook.

Anyway, I wonder what other people think about the social networking sites. Do we really need to have so many of them out there or have we reached overkill? I think it’s probably time to thin out the number of social networking sites out there…