Social Networking Cost Benefit Relationship

My generation is really in an interesting position to comment on the rise of the internet and the technologies available to date. Since the internet really started to become commercial and wide open in the early 1990’s we have seen some dramatic changes. We went from static to dynamic content and now to interactive and real-time data. It was the cool thing to have a website in the late 90’s and it was even cooler to have a blog in the early 00’s. Now, it is all about social networking and an ever increasing way to lose our personal privacy and increase our personal identity.

I have been playing with websites since the mid 90’s and really have seen the dramatic changes. I have seen first hand how statements and comments made on the internet are around forever. I have seen how simple things that can be misunderstood can cause pain and anguish for many people. I have seen most of the mistakes and made many myself. It really has been a steep learning curve.

The move from static to interactive content has given way to the “social networking” era of the internet and the costs and benefits are now at their highest level. The biggest surge for the mainstream has really been Facebook and even people that I know are computer beginners are now online and updating their personal thoughts and photos in an ever increasing pace. The really interesting thing to me is that most of these people haven’t learned the risks yet and may pay a great price. The world still can be a scary place.

You might be thinking that this is the “pot calling the kettle black” as I am one of the worse offenders. I am an early adapter for most technology and really have ground roots in many of the social networking sites. It ranges from Twitter to Facebook to FriendFeed to many ever increasing blogging activities. I am also big into support and helping people online. I am not saying that we should avoid these activities, but we all should be made of the costs that are also associated with the benefits.

It is a common conversation with myself and my friends and family about my online activities. I have paid dearly for some of my mistakes and still offer my apologies to anyone that I offended. At one point I kept all my blogs and galleries online for the world to see. That was in my foolish days and now I am extremely guarded with personal data. While I keep photos and videos on Flickr, most are private to friends and family and not for public consumption. Who cares about me anyways? That is what I used to think and now I realize it might not be who cares about me now, but in the future. It isn’t worth it.

In terms of my social networking experiences, I am still learning lessons. I keep most of it public and that might come back to bite me in the ass one day. I watch what I say and that is the best that I can do since the amazing people that I get to communicate with and relationships that I have opened up from my past have been substantial. The benefits of keeping in touch with others and in the “know” are great. My problem going forward is finding the balance between personal and public life. There are checks and balances that need to be in place to help protect our identities.

David Boles once wrote an article about our online identities and no matter how hard we try, we can never be safe. Short of turning off our internet and our computers. I have never hid behind an online persona and always use my real name. That is my way. If I used a persona, it would take the smart people about an hour or less to find me anyways. It isn’t about hiding our identities and thoughts, it is about the responsibility to ourselves and our families to protect ourselves. No one else is going to do it.

Don’t get me wrong, this post is not bashing social networking and exposure on the internet. It is more of a cautionary tale to those that haven’t taken the time to think about their own ideas on their privacy. When you click the “public” button on these sites, you are open to the billions of people in the world. Find out what you can live with and secure your data accordingly. I have friends who quit facebook now for these reason as deleting their account was their out. Others are limited to just close friends and family. Others are still plowing ahead publically. It is a personal decision.

Summing up, the internet is no different than anything else. You have to take care of yourself and blog and social network responsively!

BuddyPress for WPMU

There has been quite a bit of action in the past couple of months with talk of the future of BuddyPress. This project was started by Andy Peatlings as a way to add some “social networking” capabilities to WPMU. Due to constraints, Andy put the code up for others to work on. It even made it over to Google Code for a bit before Automattic picked up the project and hired Andy full time to work on it and other things. Great news for the project.

BuddyPress really is a way to transform the basic installation of WPMU into something more like facebook with blogging.   When released, it will have status updates, groups, friends and other great things.   Personally, I am really looking forward to this project releasing some code as it will be part of the Onvertigo Bloggers network for sure.   It is something that is lacking since most of our new bloggers are reluctant to just blog as they are “facebook” addicts.

In addition, I have the release of WPMU 1.5 with the Wordpress 2.5 additions to the code to look forward to.   While I have trouble stopping myself from adding TRAC code onto this install, I must wait for a release as much as it bothers me.    A test install of TRAC for WPMU shows it seems to work really well, but still has some bugs to squash.    Another consideration for me is my altered wp-db.php for my multiple database solution.   It is best to just wait for a final release.

It is Christmas coming for me with WPMU 1.5 and Buddypress on the way!    With no release dates, I am left uneasy.    Just have to wait I guess

Big Shag In Provost

A buddy of mine, Trevor Schneider, has a pretty good band called Big Shag. They specialize in covering mainly Top 40 song, but still manage to fire off a few of their own original songs. I hear through the facebook grapevine that they are doing a show in Provost, Alberta at the PMI (The Flying Iguana) on March 21st, 2008 starting at 9pm! Hopefully if you are around Provost you can make it! The following is one of their original songs called “Everything”

Download - Big Shag - “Everything” (original)

I hope Rooster and the boys don’t mind that I uploaded it to my server since it was a little too slow to stream off the Big Shag server. Also, don’t forget to fix the download URL’s boys on your site

The Week The Women Went

Many of you know that I was born and raised 30 minutes from Hardisty, Alberta and it was still a shock to find out that they filmed a CBC reality show called “The Week The Women Went” there. It is even more amazing to me how many of the people in the show I actually know. Even more amazing yet is how stunningly nice the town looks now (yes, you have to watch the show to find out) or be like me and just go there
The show has now aired 2 episodes and is extremely funny. It has its own facebook group as well and even its own blog from CBC. The blog itself is pretty darn funny when you actually spend the time reading it.

So what is this show really about? From the Facebook Group:

This is a weekly show on Monday evenings. CBC has filmed the lives of 117 women and their families living in Hardisty, Alberta. The women have left Hardisty for a one week paid holiday and the Husbands, Ex-Husbands, and Boyfriends are responsible for looking after the town and the children!

The women actually leave and head to Canmore, Alberta near the Banff National Park. Great show!   So why Hardisty?   They explain that in the CBC link in the first sentence of this blog, but we all know that since Doug Griffith is in it, he most likely applied for a grant to fix the town and ended up with this.    That is pure speculation on my part, but good on you Doug!

It is amazing to me that I grew up so close to Hardisty and it gets some fame. I actually lived in Cochrane near Canmore. Still gets me that I live so darn close to where Nickelback grew up. Good times. Good times!

Are You A Wordpress Fan?

Matt posted something up today on the addition of Wordpress as official site on Facebook! Are you a fan?   On a related note, I happen to be fan #19 which is my lucky number!  

Onvertigo Nightmare

I am having so many issues with my database for onvertigo.com of late that we did some serious upgrading.   Problem with that is that I no longer have a database with any information that I can use!    I would manually have to change all the entries to fit the database and then the users and then the meta and then the……..

That is not going to happen, so I am wondering if I should just start another new version of my onvertigo.com forum and see if I can quit from playing with the database and test on another installation……*sigh*

Maybe I should start another forum up just on the topic of music and see if anyone has insight on playing music and fun things like that.    Family and friends don’t need me anymore because there is this little social network called FACEBOOK!     Maybe you’ve heard of it?    Either way, my network has almost quit updating the forum and I need a new gimmick!

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