Skip to main content

Bye Bye Bebo

So, the imminent death of Bebo has been announced. I say death, as it seems unlikely anyone will want to buy an ailing social networking website in an English-speaking market dominated by Facebook .

I was on Bebo. For a while. Then I remembered that I hate people who talk in txt spk (vowels are there to be used, in my world), and witter mindlessly about drinking, and clubbing, and shopping. I grew out of that long ago, but it seems to be the main reason for Bebo's continued existence. Being on it feels like a teenage contest of who was more drunk / spent more money / plastered more makeup on / fell over more.
Hence me deleting my account some time ago (along with my MySpace one).

And I'm retreating from Facebook more too: the effort to hide the endless updates from games that people are playing is annoying; I don't need it to suggest friends for me, or patronisingly tell me to help other people find friends; I don't want to play games endlessly - I work; I don't need endless adverts for mobile phones, laptops and digital cameras. I pop on and off, see what friends are up to, occasionally use it to post photos that a wide range of friends might be interested in, then boogie off again. For a social networker, I'm getting less and less social!
Or maybe it's just that I'm getting older. Maybe I'm becoming a Grumpy Old Woman.

Now...gerroff my lawn!
Labels:

Comments

Scott said…
he sad thing about Bebo is that it may be financially better for AOL to let it die that to actually sell it - that's how fucked up finanial accounting is these days.
7 April 2010 at 15:21
Jo Alcock said…
Yay for grumpy old (before their time) women! I'm with you on this.

I feel the same about social networking - I rarely use Facebook now and when I do it's generally to send messages to people I don't email or arrange/get details of events. I recently cut down my "friends" list and will probably be cutting it further - I think I only really added people initially to see what they were up to now, and I've satified that curiousity and reconnected with anyone I wanted to now.
7 April 2010 at 16:23
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The mysteries of cataloguing

Cataloguing: an arcane art, where each piece of punctuation is significant, and commas and semi colons are all-powerful. Well, they are in "proper" libraries, where in-depth research of esoteric points goes on, and the precise spelling of Christian names, and information such as when a person lived and died can be crucial in pinpointing obscure facts. Here, we have our own catalogue system. It doesn't have a name, but if it did, it would probably be something along the lines of "I need this book NOW, no I don't care about the precise spelling of the authors middle name, or their date of birth." I know, I know, it's not snappy, but it's accurate. Cataloguing demands are different in a commercial law firm: we don't care about much more than what it's about, who wrote, when, and what jurisdiction it covers. And what we really, really care about is "where the hell is it". Law books are amazing: they have the power to move themselves f...
12 comments
Read more

Careering along

When I look around at the activities of information professional groups, it seems that there’s a disparity. There’s quite often a lot of support and funding available for those who’re just starting out in the profession, but a desert of nothingness for those of us who’re “just getting on with it”. If you’re a new professional, you have lots of groups to support you as you progress in your early career, various prize funds available for essay and report writing, access to bursaries for conference attendance, eligibility for awards for being new and enthusiastic. But what do you get when you’re past that bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed first 5 years (5 years seems to be the approximate cut-off point for becoming “established” and no longer new). What happens when you’ve already received a bursary from an organisation earlier in your career and so wouldn’t be eligible for one now, meaning you’re not able to attend events or training? When you’re heavily involved in a project but not at ...
16 comments
Read more

UK librarian blogs - the list so far

I’ve pulled the previous entries into one alphabetical list, with a few categories. Will be back later with more detailed discussion of what I’ve learned by doing this. And, as always, if you know of other librarian blogs, let me know and I’ll add them in! Institutional Library Blogs / Professional Group Blogs aRKive Appears to be the blog of the Reid Kerr College library, or someone related to the Library, but unable to confirm as it doesn’t have any ‘about’ section that I can find. Lots of posts about library topics, books, IT… Brit Lib Blogs Google Group There’s a Google Group for British librarian bloggers! Unfortunately it looks to be pretty much unused at the moment. CILIP Blogs CILIP has various blogs by either staff, or links to relevant blogs, available from the Communities section. Varying levels of activity on these blogs – the PTEG blog has one post from November 2007, while Lyndsay’s CILIP Blog has been going has been going for almost a year, with at le...
14 comments
Read more