woolcovered

Today I overheard a conversation that has become quite familiar around the cubicle farm. The topic? Facebook. The generational gap present in my workplace leads to some interesting discussions on ‘new media’. One of the older (though hardly 'old') staffers has finally signed up to everyone's favourite social networking community, so some of the twentysomethings are discussing the merits of the tool.

I think it’s probably safe to say that Facebook has taken over as the tool of choice for the livejournal user casual blogger. As my posts are all simulcasted, the irony of this statement does not elude me. I would probably consider putting posts there exclusively were I not so fond of my domain name (and the increased accessibility it affords).

I’ve been thinking about this phenomenon for a few months – probably too long, as the statement doesn’t sound terribly insightful now. But it has become most obvious while I’m at work. In the last month, I could probably count on one hand the number of updates I’ve seen on my feed reader under the “Friend Blogs” category. And as I do virtually zero recreational surfing at home, the net result of this has been that I’ve fallen behind on pretty much all my Facebook-posting friends’ lives.

Facebook does allow users to go to a single place to find out which of their friends have updated their ‘notes’ – this is key to folks who aren’t willing to commit to the learning curve of an .rss reader. But as someone who uses this method of news/blog reading almost exclusively (and has Facebook blocked at work) I find myself left out in the social networking cold.

In a year or so, I will be interested to see if this halts the proliferation of registrations to popular blog publishing sites.