This week an article appeared on Wired advocating alternatives to Facebook. One of the ideas put forward is for people just to set up a blog.

With a little savvy, anyone can create a page that includes all of the fun stuff found in a Facebook profile.

Start by setting up a blog. Say what’s on your mind. Unlike your blog on Facebook or MySpace, everyone will be able to read it.

The thing is, I tried that and it didn’t work.

Back when I was a vain popularity-seeking teenager (not that I am not a vain popularity-seeking twenty-something) I set up a website, and later a blog. The justification for the vanity space was that I would use it as a place to keep in touch with friends. I could, for instance, tell people that I had yet again changed my MSN Messenger address, or about whatever crazy / boring exploits I had been getting up to.

I mean, some people send fucking newsletters, which is forcing other people to read your boring news. The idea with the blog was: here is me letting off some steam and giving some information. You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to. And here is the rub: no bugger read it.

At least, none of my “real life” friends did. Somehow or another I managed to make my blog interesting to complete strangers. I became better and better at that until it became the world-conquering blog you are reading today. But still, I could probably count the number of “real life” friends that read this blog on my fingers. Many of my friends probably have no clue that I even have a blog.

I would have loved it to work that way. Do you not think it would be great if everyone had a blog? I could just read it at my leisure instead of having to go through the laborious process of contacting someone to find out any gossip or news. Unfortunately, most people just do not want to set up a website of their own.

Enter Facebook, Bebo and MySpace to save the day. If websites like this existed when I was a vain popularity-seeking teenager, I probably would not have felt the need to set up my own blog. One likes to think of blogging as easy and accessible, but it can be a bit laborious to keep it maintained and to keep the cobwebs away.

A website like Facebook, on the other hand, is different. You can just sign up and you’re away. No faffing around with HTML. I think the key words in Wired’s suggestion are “With a little savvy”. But even if you have the savvy, why would you go to the hassle of all that when Facebook can do it all for you?

The article goes on:

From there [on your blog], you can pull in your photos from Flickr or Zooomr and show off your impeccable musical taste by creating a profile at iLike or Last.fm. You can share your web bookmarks using del.icio.us or Ma.gnolia and publish a list of your most recent reads using Shelfari or LibraryThing…

This is what I do on my blog, and it did not help encourage any of my friends to read my blog. Anyway, why should you go to the bother of signing up to Flickr, del.icio.us, Last.fm and goodness knows how many other third party services if Facebook has many similar features of its own?

For sure, this is what I and many others do. But how many people can really be expected to go to those sorts of lengths when Facebook’s features can, by and large, do the job just as well? Facebook Photos is said to be the most used photo app on the internet.

The point about MySpace, Facebook and the like is that they are designed to do a job. They represent somebody saying, “Look here — you can have your own little corner of the internet, and connect with all of your friends and see what they have to say.” There is no need to take the initiative yourself, because Facebook have already taken the initiative for you.

The thing is that people are not expected to have their own website. But they are expected to have a presence on one or many of: MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. What this means is that people who know me would think of searching for me on Bebo or Facebook to find my profile and add me as a friend. But they would never think of searching for me on Google in case I have a blog. Even if they found it, they might not even be sure that they have found the right person.

Likewise, friends will often post on my Facebook wall, but never leave a comment. Even if they read my blog, and see that other people make comments regularly, the vast majority of my real life friends will baulk at leaving a comment, even if I personally encourage them to do so. Instead, they choose to tell me what they think the next time they see me down the pub.

The Wired article advocates the opening up of social networks, and proposes public blogs as a potential alternative. But part of the appeal of websites like Facebook is the very privacy of it. If you want to post information to be circulated among your friends only, a public blog will never be the place to put it.

When entering data into Facebook, you’re sending it on a one-way trip. Want to show somebody a video or a picture you posted to your profile? Unless they also have an account, they can’t see it. Your pictures, videos and everything else is stranded in a walled garden, cut off from the rest of the web.

For many people, this is precisely the appeal of Facebook. As MySpace’s slogan says, it’s “a place for friends”. A blog simply isn’t.

• Gary Andrews has other views on Facebook