Or should I say the media's fascination with them annoy me. Does no one remember geocites? How about the good old fashioned users homepage?

Social Networking websites are nothing new. The only difference is instead of being covered in animated gif's they are covered in movie streams and questionable background images.

Isn't that thing called Netlog after a name change some time ago?? aaah no, that was Facebox. Whatever, they're all the same crap to me.

Pre-Yahoo! Geocities was as close to a "virtual community" as it got, with all of those neighborhood concepts and such. Livejournal was doing the blogging stuff eons before those dudes in MySpace turned the thing into a freak show. And social "networks" were pioneered by hi5, for all I know. None of these appear in the social networking craze hype of these days.

In my opinion, social networking sites have grown too much, too annoying to be useful for anything anymore; even my friends have told me that hi5 was a "nice idea" but that it sucked when everyone else started to do the same.

Sad thing is that now even Youtube is jumping on the Social Networking bandwagon... now you don't just read other sad people's musings, you WATCH them musing on screen!

who even use myspace for anything and I thought it

was more just a hook up sight you know have genitalia wish

to use same, need human. I don't really trust computers for that

kind of communication I don't think anyone should.

OK, look at it this way - a thirty year old sends in his job application and at the top of his 'interests' list sits Facebook. Do you a) throw the CV into the bin, or b) show the CV around the workplace, have a good laugh and then throw the CV into the bin.

SNS may be all the rage at the moment, but that's because its fashionable and allows newspaper commentators to fill blank pages more easily than having to research a proper subject. As soon as the initial interest passes (and I think we're pretty much there now) most 'normal' people will move on to the next thing, leaving behind a gazillion bored, angst ridden teenagers and a bunch of socially inept adults who can only interact socially through the emotional buffer of a computer screen and keyboard.

p.s. YouTube is not SNS. SNS prime purpose is social interaction. YouTube exists for the viewing of illegally uploaded clips from TV shows.

I don't know about others but I find all these social networking sites turn people into goldfish. So much news and information and man the information just keeps coming that no one retains anything. If it ain't happening right now they have forgotten about it. No one takes hold of something and runs with it for a while.

Take the example of a class of students I am involved with. All the younger generation have jumped on the social networking bandwagon and are next to useless at retaining information and learning because they are too interested in something going on elsewhere. Goes hand in hand with the always on mobile fascination I suppose too.

Being able to turn off and zone out is a good thing. If you are going to stay connected all the time it is a recipe for burning out.

"Free" email providers mine your correspondence for whatever purpose they like. So what can we expect of free social networking providers?

I'm rather appalled by the huge popularity of free services even among IT professionals that should know better. The hard lesson that Chinese dissidents learned about Google will eventually be learned in the West as we compete in patriotically shedding our civil rights.

Never has so much repression-friendly technology been available and it's getting cheaper every day. Not only that, but fear-mongering defense contractors trip over each other trying to cash in on the terror scare and exploit our growing ability to record nearly everything everywhere. It reminds me of C. S. Lewis' comment to the effect that Science is not about controlling Nature, it's about controlling Man. I'll bet that a lot of Reg readers are gainfully employed proving him right.

Facebook is worthless as a business networking tool as it lacks context. You might be a member of the "Scunthorpe Chartered Accountants" group, but they'll see the same information on your profile as the "Blackpool University Weed Smoking Club Alumni '97" group.

You have no control over the information posted about you to Facebook and there doesn't seem to be any real reason for collecting all that data - at least Google can (sort of) justify it by providing more relevant and targeted search results.

Social networks only provide value when they've got a context - business with LinkedIn, old friends with FriendsReunited and hitting on 16 year olds with Myspace.