Firstly, sorry if there should be any mistake, including wrong terms, not-so-accurate descriptions, especially on technical things, within my post that I’m going to write here. I must admit, I don’t really have a sound knowledge on internet technology. I’ve just been blogging around (un-regularly) for several months, joined Facebook last year, Twitter two months ago, and am not in touch with Twittad yet. However, since they’re all part of phenomena, I thought I’ll just share my thoughts of them.
And I’ll talk about Twitter first. Well, actually, I was just introduced – by my lecturer – to this relatively new facility (at least for me), this emerging trend on the net, about two months ago. And it was at the first few weeks of my Online Journalism class this semester at UTS.
But wait! Anyone still has no clue of what I’m talking about here? Well, just check out Wikipedia’s description on it, or have a look at this company review.
OK… So anyway, I joined it, but had a ‘lack of responsibility’ to tweet regularly for the first couple of days. Later on, I’ve even abandoned the account for almost two weeks. Until then I went back again, tweeted again, and lately I’m on a steady phase of enjoying it.
But that’s not the news. There’s nothing interesting about it of course – though I doubt anything I write here is interesting at all… 
. After all, I believe many people would have known this tweety-little-facility for quite some time now. And perhaps, as Twitter’s development really moves fast, some people might have even earned some ‘real thing’ from it. Yes, a real thing such as money!
Money? Well, for this matter, I firstly read about it from a couple of articles on an Indonesian blog, Blogguebo.com. Here’s one of the articles there. Basically, it’s talking about Twittad, a supposedly-related-facility which ‘provides chances’ for Twitter’s account holders to earn money through their pages, by letting other parties to place their ad on it. Check out a little bit more about it on TechCrunch here.
But is it all positive about Twitter so far? Of course, as many other things in the world, apparently it’s not. Just recently for example, there’s a report from the US Army about possibility of Twitter being a new medium for terrorists. Likely true or not, everybody can just have their own opinion on that.
Now, what about Facebook then? One sure thing is that this social networking site has also been on a constant move up for quite some time now. And despite several problems they’ve faced, or still facing, such us the new design issue which was on its peak just a few moments ago, the owners and organisers of the site are still gaining their fortunes – and just see how the design problem is almost forgotten now.
And though a couple of other problems keep coming or being raised, like the one from Carmen Joy King here who admits she has just quit using the site to “stop being a narcissist” (and suggesting people to do the same), still, a lot of people would be ready to ‘defend’ Facebook – check the article’s comments to see how. While at the same time, for example, this article from Valleywag’s Paul Boutin, is clearly supporting the existence and current emerging trend of sites like Twitter, Facebook, or Flickr.
And reading those arguments of Joy King, as well as Boutin there, I then also questioned myself about what I’ve been doing. Am I also at the ‘wrong direction’ on Facebook? And what about my blogging activity? A useless stupid-old-fashioned thing as well?
Well, in the end, I guess it depends on each and every one of us (haha.. yes, of course that’s not my line!). Especially for the last one, about blogging. Because if thousands of current Indonesian bloggers for example, are suggested this argument, that blogging is actually out-of-date, how would the upcoming and highly-anticipated “Pesta Blogger 2008” (bloggers fiesta) feels like? Turning into a moment full of ‘empty debates’ about the continuing existence of blogging, and not fulfilling its initial aim to make contributions to the society? I personally hope not. Seriously.
All pictures/logo are copied from the actual sites they represent, except for the Facebook icon that’s from the developer’s page.
