Socializing In the Matrix

Nowadays, many people are living a second social life in cyberspace. Here's my personal review of the main social network sites out there.

MYSPACE

I got into MySpace back in 2006 and set up a total of 4 accounts. It was a lot fun the first couple of years and I accumulated about 700 friends on each of 2 of my accounts and over 200 on another. The thrill of making new friends around the world, hooking up with old ones, displaying animated toons I did, and having a player for my songs for people to listen to, I couldn't ask for more.

But lately the thrill of MySpace is gone. Too many vultures swooping to it, mainly scammers, spammers, phishers, and hackers. The worst ones try to infect your computer through your MySpace account any which way they can. Some want to turn your computer into their own personal relay station, others want to harvest credit card info and email addresses. The porn spammers are particularly persistant. I like to look at underdressed hot chicks as much as the next guy, but the second I get one of those cyberhos who look like strippers trying to lure me to some porn site on the premise of trying to friend me, I almost always delete them. I figured I was savvy enough to deflect all the predators... until this week.

Recently, I was having my computer knocked offline moments after logging onto MySpace. I was worried, but figured it would pass. A few days ago I had an extreme virus attack from MySpace that nearly did my computer in. Fortunately I kicked off my PC's power right away. When I turned it back on, it seemed at first as if nothing was going to come on or work. Needless to say, it scared the Holy Shiite out of me.

But fortunately my virus protection overcame it and got my computer virus free. But I'm going to wait months or longer before I try to log into MySpace again.

FACEBOOK

I kept hearing good things about Facebook so I figured I might as well try it out. It's not bad, but it doesn't give you all the access and possibilities of MySpace. You can't imbed music players or photos on your main page.

TWITTER

I just got into Twitter last week and it seems like a lot of fun in some ways. Some Twitter-addicted celebrities like to share their thoughts all day with you after you become their "follower" on Twitter. Not as much fun as MySpace before it started getting crazy, but not bad.

Bill Wright