Socially Acceptable Media

In recent posts we’ve talked at length about Twitter and Facebook, as two of the more popular social networking sites on the internet they garner a great deal of interest and attention – but they aren’t the only places out there to stay in touch with friends (and make new ones).  In this article we’ll take a look at some of the other social sites on the web.

MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/)

Remember MySpace?  It’s faded in popularity a bit with the rise in prominence of Facebook, but MySpace is still out there.  Being owned by News Corp. could have brought an infusion of cash and talent, but it seems instead to have contributed to MySpace losing a bit of it’s “cool” factor.  Recent visits give me the impression that it’s contracting back to music/band roots; which is fitting because Facebook – while a great landing page for fans – doesn’t allow much in the way of page customization that some artists crave.  In my opinion though, this level of customization also led to the downfall of MySpace.  It was ‘possible’ do alter just about every facet of a page, but you had to be well-versed in both Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) in order to do it successfully.  Possible, but unlikely; which led to many pages looking like they were drawn in crayon by a five year old.  MySpace did lead the charge though, and should be commended for blazing that trail.

FourSquare (http://playfoursquare.com/)

I found foursquare in the last few months and while I don’t use it often, I do use it whenever I’m out.  Foursquare gives you the ability to “check in” when you’re in a restaurant or bar.  Foursquare is designed to work best when well populated, so that when you’re out and about and check in, any friends who are using the application can find you.  It also serves to provide a history of places you’ve been.  Not designed so much to review establishments, but rather to connect in real-time to other people making it a true social network, bridging the online and real worlds.

Yahoo! Messenger (http://messenger.yahoo.com/)

Yes, Yahoo’s instant messenger application is still out there!!  Several years ago, Yahoo! IM and AOL’s instant messenger (AIM) were the kings of what would eventually become social networking – they were the utilities that people used to stay in touch in real-time vs. email.  I’m talking about Yahoo in the past tense here – so you may be wondering why I chose to include them in this rundown of Twitter/Facebook alternatives.  Within the past few weeks Yahoo released a revamped version of it’s mobile App for the iPhone platform; when I launched it for the first time it “felt” new.  It didn’t feel like an old stodgy platform on the verge of being retired, but rather like an application that was trying to stage a comeback.  The functionality is all pretty much the same, but the user interface is cleaner and leaves itself open to even more improvements.  The next step might be adding location services – since Twitter is just about to roll that themselves, Yahoo wouldn’t be too far behind.  I’m not better on a Yahoo resurgence, but at least they’re still battling!