by Calvin Robinson on July 26, 2008.

Well I’m not signed up to every social network out there, like some. But I am signed up to pretty much every kind of social service.
I tend to test a few out, pick a favourite and stick with it.

I really never liked myspace, but I Bebo is for kids, and there was nothing else on the scene at the time. I was very happy when Facebook took off, without all the horrible customised pages of facebook – and it’s only recently that spammers have started to add me on facebook, this was very much a myspace thing, for the longest time.

FriendFeed is the lifestream I went with, although to be honest I hardly use that, as not many of my IRL friends use it yet. In my opinion these kind of sites are designed for just that ‘FriendFeed’. For me to see what my friends are upto.
Of course I added a few people I’ve met online, as well as a few of the A-List bloggers I follow. But from observing other people, it seems FriendFeed is all about watching the A-list people, just like Twitter.

identi.ca – I love it! At the moment it’s full of early adopters and tech geeks – people I can relate to. The conversations are interesting, and people actually respond. I won’t go into it again, as I posted about this the other day. But identi.ca is a really nice service. Probably my favourite atm.

Twitter – in all honesty I don’t use Twitter anymore. See previous post for info.

Twinkle – again, I absolutely love this. There’s a real community building around the London area. I have Twinkle set to a 50mile radius, and I’m seeing real people talking about real, everyday things. Very casual, but entertaining.
Of course my Twinkle also posts to Twitter. So this is the only way my Twitter gets used these days.

Flickr – I hardly use my Canon anymore, it’s too big to cary around unless I’m specifically going somewhere to take photos. But I used to take a lot of snaps with my Nokia N82 5mp camera, which is quite good. My friends call my the photo-spammer, because I’m always capturing moments. Flickr has come in useful for this, and it is becomming more useful on my iPhone with the Shozu app. I take snaps, and instantly upload them. It’s just a shame my iPhone has such a shit camera.

Last.Fm – I’ve always had mixed opinions about this site. I originally used it to compare my music tastes with those of my friends. But more recently I’ve been using the Recommended Radio Station, both on my desktop and my iPhone. Very nice, I’ve heard a lot of good ch00nage this way.

12seconds – A newcomer. One I’m very excited about. I never used seesmic, I didn’t see the point in it. I can bore people with text, I don’t need to bore them with Video But with 12seconds its video-micro-blogging. I can just put out a quick opinion or comment, and its out there. No editing, no falseties, just straight out there. I like that. I’m can easily follow people on this site, without getting bored.

Qik – This is one video site I did like. I find it really quite fun streaming my experiences when I’m out-and-about. I’m just waiting on the iPhone client to be released now, as I’m no longer carrying the N82 around with me.

Youtube – Of course I have lots of fun wathcing silly videos here, but I don’t spend much time uploading them at the moment. It’s just such a long process. I upload the odd concert video now and then.

I honestly can’t see me singing up to another social network, unless they re-invent Facebook with a whole new concept. All my RL friends are on there, and if they all move elsewhere I’ll probably just close my FB account.
Infact the only reason I keep my myspace account is because I have Private Messages on there that I don’t want to lose.

I’d much rather try out new ideas and social media services than sign up to more of the same old.
The problem is, my RL friends don’t tend to sign up to sites until they’re already like out-of-date in my mind lol.