Posts Tagged ‘Social Networking Sites’

What Happened to AOL Instant Messenger?

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

Seriously, what happened to AOL’s Instant Messenger (AIM)? There was a time when this was the major method of communication between college students, high school students, and even some small businesses. Yet, the other night I signed on and only 12 of my 112 friends were online. And of those 12 people that were online, 6 were either away or in a sleep mode!

What happened to AIM? Could it be that the rise of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace (with their built-in messaging systems) have rendered AIM, ICQ, and Yahoo! Messenger useless? Maybe the fact that text/picture messages and Blackberries are ubiquitous in today’s society also hinders AIM’s growth. Seems logical.

Granted, I understand that I first started using AIM over ten years ago (probably closer to 15 years ago) when I was a young teenager. Since I’m in my late 20’s these days, I guess that most of the people that I talked to on AIM are either now on my text message list or are a Facebook friend. It would appear that I don’t need AIM any more, actually, since I rarely sign on anyway.

And as I’ve written on JerseySmarts.com a few times already, I’ve been very interested in paring down the software that sits dormant on my laptop. In the last month I’ve removed a bunch of this unneeded software that has been taking up precious disk space. A week or two ago I uninstalled Google Chrome because I rarely used it (plus I’ve already become so accustomed to Mozilla Firefox) and earlier today I uninstalled Yahoo! Messenger since I haven’t used it in over a year. When looking around my computer, I found the old “AOL Instant Messenger” program which was replaced with AOL’s current AIM program…so I removed the old program since I hadn’t used it since the spring of 2006. Also, I purchased a discounted copy of Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007, which prompted me to uninstall OpenOffice.org from Sun Microsystems. Could AIM be next on the list of programs to be deleted? I’m not sure.

I think that I’d like to keep at least one of each of the major programs (one instant messenger program, one major non-Microsoft browser, one major office productivity suite, etc), so AIM may stay around on that fact alone. But the truth remains that even if the program does stay on my computer it’ll probably be a rarely used piece of software.

Isn’t it amazing how the internet and electronic communication have changed?

Posted in Computers, Internet, & Technology, Entertainment | 3 Comments »

Gone From MySpace – Only Facebook Now

Friday, September 4th, 2009

Well, I’ve been talking about it for some time and I finally deleted my MySpace account today. It was an interesting process because I brought up my “friends” list (which is decidedly smaller than it was 1 – 2 years ago thanks to everyone switching to Facebook) to see if I was already linked up with that person on Facebook. First of all, I was friends with all but 8 or 9 people on both networks. That’s 8 or 9 out of near 200 friends (and once near 400).

Second, I absolutely hate the way that MySpace pages can be overly manipulated. I was friends with some people who chose to completely screw up their MySpace pages to the point where you’d need a 50″ screen on an ultra high resolution just to see the entire page at once. Completely ridiculous. That’s one of the features that I like about Facebook – it doesn’t allow you to break their basic format (and I hope they never move in that direction).

As for the cancellation process on MySpace, I found it to be overly cumbersome. You have to choose to “cancel” your account two or three times and then when you get the e-mail confirmation, you have to click on a link and confirm the cancellation again. I’m sure the News Corp lawyers that run the legal end of MySpace have some reason for that process, but it’s a bit ridiculous. Just let people cancel and move on already.

So now that I’m off of MySpace and LinkedIn, I think that I’m only on Facebook. I have to go and check whether or not I have any outstanding online profiles at Yahoo, but I should be good at this point. I’m considering whether or not to get rid of the Google photo album, too. There is only a limited amount of space available and it’s a little annoying to upload pictures to both Facebook and Google. I guess I’ll rest on that one a little bit longer, too.

In the last year I’ve merged both of my blogs into the one that you’re reading now and deleted unnecessary profiles at MySpace, LinkedIn, and Plaxo. Frankly, after a while it just gets to be too much. I think that this is the fate that Twitter has ahead of it. By the way, has anyone noticed how Twitter is essentially the new AIM for a younger generation? Just an observation.

No more MySpace!

Posted in Computers, Internet, & Technology | 2 Comments »

No Longer on LinkedIn

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

Way back in April I uploaded an entry talking about how there were too many social networking websites out there. Well, this topic has been in my mind again lately. If you go back and read that entry from April, you’ll see that I had just deleted my Plaxo account because it was useless. Also in that entry you’ll find this:

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.

Well, this post is being written on the heels of deleting my account at LinkedIn. Overall, I just didn’t see the need to try to maintain an additional networking “profile” at LinkedIn. Yes, I had a lot of “connections,” but I didn’t see much of a value in the LinkedIn membership. Everyone who I was connected to was either someone that I was already connected to on Facebook or someone from my fraternity that I never met because he went to a school out in the Midwest or the West Coast. Sure, it’s cool that we were in the same organization, but if you’re connecting with me on LinkedIn and you’re either out of work or engaged in a career that doesn’t cross mine at all, then it’s really a useless connection.

Side note – I had so many connections that I couldn’t automatically delete my account! Apparently, if you have more than 100 connections (I think I had 105), an actual human being has to okay the deletion of your account. For some reason I find that interesting.

That’s another social networking site down…which one could be next?

Posted in Computers, Internet, & Technology | 5 Comments »

Too Many Social Networking Sites Out There

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

Have you noticed that there are too many social networking sites out there these days? Between MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Twitter, Reunion, and any other number of “hey, look at me!” websites, keeping up with everything is beginning to get a bit tedious. In fact, just the other day I deleted my Plaxo account because I couldn’t imagine why I would need it at all. (more…)

Posted in Computers, Internet, & Technology | 6 Comments »

Annoying People and New Technology

Thursday, October 9th, 2008

As a fierce defender of the American worker I admire those in the working world who are older than I am and constantly try to improve their skills to maintain their relevancy in an increasingly younger workforce. Older co-workers generally have excellent learning experiences to teach younger workers and – at least in the case of technology – vice versa.

Over the last few days I’ve been electronically accosted by a former associate who is more than two decades older than I am. This hasn’t been a malicious attack, rather it is simply this person finally figuring out how to use MySpace among other online social networking tools. Since they’ve figured out how these things work, I now have the joy of being e-mailed with “Join Facebook!” e-mails on all of my e-mail accounts. Like I really need someone to tell me that I should join LinkedIn again. I’m already on these friggin’ things! Lay off!

Anyway, what I’m saying here is that if you’re not accustomed to how these social networking sites work, then here’s the deal. If you send a friend an invite to join a social networking site – one invite is enough. Chances are that they are already on one of the big three (MySpace, Facebook, or LinkedIn). They don’t need you sending them invites to these things over and over again at a variety of e-mail addresses. Just relax and be normal!

Posted in Computers, Internet, & Technology, Idiots, Morons, & Fools | 2 Comments »
© 1996 - 2010 Usable Web Solutions, LLC
Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS).

All content is exclusive to this site and may be reprinted only with express written permission of the Owner of this site.
Privacy Policy | Contact Us