I think people have forgotten why and how the internet was created… Indeed, given I worked with a couple of people involved in early internet stuff, I wonder if that makes me a threat to your “seekrit informations” on facebook?

Just wait until people realise there are archives of other web pages out there as well… On the internet, nothing is private, get over it! Email is not private – as my T shirt says… “I read your email” (Actually, I have better things to do with my time, but the point remains the same). The internet shouldn’t be considered a secure medium for transferring sensitive data – and particularly once stuff is sent or posted, you can’t always get it back!

Blogs are being killed (albeit very slowly) by content scrapers and spam comments – neither of which seem to be a problem with Facebook yet (although I suspect it’s only a matter of time) – I know a few of my colleagues read my blog, I know my parents do, but I don’t tend to write long essay type posts very often… I’m not really a writer…

I’ve thought quite a few times about simply shutting down tvotw.co.uk – but I never do… although over the years it’s gone from a compeletly custom coded site to a WordPress/Flickr mashup… I think the future is exactly that – sites providing services (like Flikr) which you can merge into your own site…

For my blog, I try to make it a mixture of “me” and commentary on other things – but invariably I don’t have time to write enough of the “me” posts.

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/facebook

I love that.

Why not “my friends would never dream of asking me about politics in case I turn out to be a socialist…”

>I think you’re right about Facebook. I think another reason it’s so big and personal blogs are not is that I guess you have to be a certain type of person to regularly write blog entries – you have to regularly write essays that make a point and read well and so on, whereas on Facebook you can post on someone’s wall without context or readability being a problem.

That is the weakness (strength) of Facebook and Myspace. I just took several blogs off politics-scotland.co.uk because they were on a “social” site which meant that all sorts crud from all sorts of idiots was getting into the newsfeed.

I think “proper” blogging (like you and I like to think I do) is different too. I used to write about what I did, but my blog gradually evolved into being more about topics like politics and news and my opinions on them. I don’t think people necessarily read proper blogs because they like or know the person, they read them because they offer opinion or entertainment.

Friends of mine have started blogs in the past (and invariably given up after a few posts), if they’d posted about what they think about the news or whatever, it being the blog of someone I know personally becomes irrelevant, as they’re really just another voice offering an opinion.

Basically I’m trying to say that social networks and blogs are fundamentally different. Sort of.