Here is something that I’ve been pondering about quite a bit recently. A few years ago it was all bad news for bloggers who have jobs. Getting sacked because of your blog stuck fear into so many that it the concept even spawned its own word: dooce.

People who have been dooced are not in short supply. There was Joe Gordon who wrote unflattering things about his employers. Rather more unfairly there was Petite Anglaise, who was seemingly sacked for merely existing. Or something. And of course there is Heather Armstrong.

Because of all this, there is a bit of a fear about employers discovering your blog. I guess that is a bit old-fashioned now. More salient is the issue of MySpace and Facebook accounts being discovered. Blogs must seem relatively benign compared to some MySpace profiles.

Nevertheless, there is still a bit of a dilemma. What do you do if you are a blogger who is hunting for a job? I am getting to the stage where I am starting to think seriously about this issue. By this time next year I am supposed to have graduated and be doing a proper job. I now have to contend with the fact that large swathes of my personal life and opinions are out there in the open.

I’m not upset or angry about that. I was always aware that it would be the case. But it’s an interesting problem to tackle. It is pretty much accepted that nowadays employers will Google job candidates as a basic check.

True, you could blog anonymously. But I let that cat out of the bag years ago. Anyone searching for my name will find my website, this blog and my accounts for Bebo, Jaiku and Twitter — all on the first page of results.

Thankfully, while the general advice to blogging workers a few years ago was to keep it under your hat, nowadays I am seeing more and more people saying that having a blog is actually a boost to your career prospects. I am still not entirely convinced. Sitting in a Web 2.0 bubble, it is easy to say that blogging is great. But in my day-to-day life I still feel as though blogging is something that many people scoff at.

I mean, it is probably fair to say that blogging is a hobby for me. And hobbies are generally spoddy, right? Trainspotting, stamp collecting, fishing. It’s okay to be a nerd if it’s a hobby. Yet I would probably still be more comfortable listing ‘philately’ as a hobby than ‘blogging’. If somebody asks me what I did last night I will usually say, “Oh, nothing really. Just relaxed a bit.” But in reality I probably spent three hours blogging.

That is not because I am ashamed of my blog. Far from it. But the fact is that if I was to say to somebody that one of my biggest achievements was my blog, people would think I was the most utterly lame person alive. “Oh, you’ve got a blog? I had one of them once. So, who reads your blog? Your mum?”

The unfortunate fact is that for most people out there, a blogger is at best a wannabe writer who is not talented enough to be a professional. At worst, a blogger is a rambling, incoherent, narcissistic teenager.

The crux of the matter is this. You and I know that blogging can be a pretty worthwhile activity. But what does the person reading my CV think?

It could go either way I guess. I am in a hairy situation because my CV is rather bare. And as excellent as my current workplace is, I am guessing that it will take a bit more than filling shelves to impress potential employers.

The truth is that blogging probably is one of my better achievements. It has certainly been my main extracurricular activity over the past few years. So I think I will throw caution to the wind and stick it on my CV. After all, chances are that they will find it via Google anyway. I am also convinced that my years of blogging has given me lots of skills. That is actual skills, not M4D 5K1LL5.

Rhys Wynne has blogged about the skills that he has gained from blogging. And, via Rhys Wynne, I have also found this list of useful skills that bloggers have.

I mostly agree with them. I will explain why tomorrow.

Update: I have now posted the list here.

The internet is said to have made a lot of people’s jobs more difficult. Record company bosses, for instance. Or insurance companies. Or publishers. Surely another should be added to the list: lexicographers.

I was thinking the other day about how quickly new words enter everyday vocabulary. Before the internet, language evolved slowly and often in geographical pockets. Now? It’s “chav” this and “wag” that and “spam” the other (not to mention omg, wtf, lol, btw). And the fact that I am blogging about this would befuddle the 1990s you.

In fact, spam proves the point quite well. Of course, spam has existed since the year dot as a strange canned meat product. But when you say spam today you think of unsolicited (usually commercial) email. The word spam was first used in this sense in the 1980s, yet it took until at least the late 1990s for it to become a household name.

Today? Some wise guy can invent some half-arsed new term and almost instantly it is all over the internet like a rash. Or a rasher (rashr?). Of bacn.

I first heard of bacn via Gordon McLean. When I saw it at his blog I thought it was pronounced like the word ‘back’ with a rogue ‘n’ at the end. I thought it looked a bit like the name for some dodgy quango. British Autocratic Complete Numpties? (Too honest a name to be a real quango I guess.)

I soon remembered that this is “the age of the stupid removal, for no good reason, of the penultimate letter of a word if the penultimate letter is a vowel and the last letter is a consonant”. This is thanks to those wise guys at Flickr. Wankrs the lot of them. So bacn is like bacon, except now you have to delete the ‘o’ when you accidentally type it out of habit.

I have since learned through Boing Boing that bacn is an overnight internets phenomenon. So what is this mysterious bacn?

Putting it simply, Bacn is email you receive that isn’t spam… And isn’t personal mail. It’s the middle class of email. It’s notifications of a new post to your Facebook wall or a new follower on Twitter. It’s the Google alert for your name and the newsletter from your favorite company.

On Boing Boing it is described as “e-mail you want, just not now”.

The thing about this bacn thing, though, is that this is not really a phenomenon that I identify with. Spam is ubiquitous. We all know what it is. We all get it. We all hate it. Bacn? Not quite.

I can just about see it when it comes to the newsletter from my favourite company. But usually I just (skim) read them straight away so that they don’t pile up. I have signed up to The Economist’s newsletters, but I almost never read them. Hardly counts as “email you want”, even though I did ask for them. The exception is the indispensable Boomkat newsletter, which is one of the first things I read on a Friday.

So what about the rest of them — Twitter follower notifications, Facebook wall post notifications and the like? Well, I do want to know about them now. I just don’t want to read them.

Google Talk comes with a handy Gmail notifier which tells me whenever I get a new email. I can just look at the subject of the email and pretty much know what it is. Take three recent notifications that I received from three different websites:

• X sent you a message on Facebook
• X is now following you on Twitter
• Please confirm story about X [from Bebo]

In each case I did not want to read the email. What a waste of time. I just marked them as read the next time I logged into Gmail. But in each case I did visit the relevant website immediately to see what was going on.

Maybe I would understand more if I was an omg wtf busy 24/7 21^st century lifestyle stressed out city dude. But for me, bacn is not so much email that I want to put off reading until later. It’s email that I either want to read immediately (like the Boomkat newsletter), or not at all (Twitter followers).

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

NB. This is part two of a two-part post. Read part one here.

I was explaining how, sitting here today, it is difficult to see why anyone would want to sign up to a social network that isn’t Facebook.

While MySpace used to be the market leader, it was always far too annoying and buggy to remain on the radar for long. Every time I visit MySpace I just get bombarded with spam. Most friend requests are either from awful bands, fake people or are just plain spam. Visiting MySpace is like wading through a thick, stinking swamp. With pink glittery things in it.

By contrast, I don’t recall ever seeing a single piece of spam on Facebook. Not even a spammy friends request.

As for Bebo, at least you can say they are not just burying their heads in the sand. I never really saw what Bebo had going for it, apart from being slightly less worse than MySpace. But that’s not saying much. They have recently launched a minor redesign, which looks like a desperate attempt to be perceived as Web 2.0.

But Bebo is a pretty tired site now. As I said above, many of the site’s features are now watered-down copies of other websites. Take the “sayings” feature, a recent feature which is a copy of Twitter in every way. Except the Bebo version does not link to your mobile phone, and is generally a bit rubbish.

I guess the “me too” thing is quite clever, but I think it says something about Bebo users if they can’t even think up an original thought. And what is with those Skittles emoticons? Why? They seem immensely popular as well.

My biggest beef with Bebo is the fact that you can’t post a link on your profile. That is the stupidest thing ever. Is not the WWW supposed to be all about links? Even worse, when you just type in a URL, Bebo puts spaces in it to prevent the text from spilling over the narrow columns — so these URLs become broken because of Bebo.

But despite all of these niggles, I don’t think Bebo is in any immediate danger of going south à la MySpace. Bebo attracts a different audience to Facebook. You get a lot more young people there, which you might be able to tell if you clicked the link to the popular sayings above. They won’t be tempted by Facebook at the moment. But what about when they grow up?…

As for LiveJournal… aaah. MatGB’s brilliant post on this matter sums it up (and that was what spurred on many of the thoughts that led to these posts). He thinks LiveJournal is dying, and he is probably right.

The only reason I have a LiveJournal is because I got it years ago, when it was still vaguely popular. One-by-one, my friends that did use it stopped. I can think of only one “real lifer” LJ friend that still posts on LJ. My posting there has slowed to a trickle (once every 2 or 3 months, really) and just about the only person who ever posts comments on my LJ now is MatGB.

When Vox was released, I said that I would probably choose Vox over LJ if I didn’t already have an LJ account. Now it is difficult to think of a website that I would actually prefer to sign up to rather than LJ. Hell, even when MySpace came along, LiveJournal suddenly looked a bit old-hat. Dare I say it’s a Web 1.0 website trying to survive in a Web 2.0 world.

It might be different for me. LiveJournal always seemed to be a bit different. It’s got a community that I just never found myself able to become a part of. For this reason, I reckon LiveJournal will probably keep many of its current users until they die.

But MatGB hit the nail on the head. If you didn’t have a LiveJournal account, why would you sign up for one today? Why would you, when you can sign up to Facebook? Six Apart have pissed off a lot of LJers, and their recent accidental deletion of up to 500 legitimate LiveJournals does little to instil confidence in the people running LiveJournal.

In short, Facebook is in prime position to collect up a huge proportion of the users of social networks. It already attracts all sorts of people who weren’t tempted by MySpace or Bebo. And because of the smart way Facebook has allowed itself to grow, that looks set to continue. At the moment, it is unthinkable that Facebook will drop the ball like Friendster, MySpace and LiveJournal all did.

While the refusal of Facebook to sell out to Yahoo! for $1bn might be seen as arrogance, on the other hand I think Facebook are really clever not just to become another one of those companies that gets bought by Yahoo! / Google / Microsoft / eBay.

I get the feeling that a lot of the Web 2.0 startups that have been sold to larger companies have become a little bit fusty. I no longer see the appeal in Flickr at all, and when was the last time you saw something new from del.icio.us?

I get the impression that for too many startups, their entire business model is based on crossing their fingers and hoping that Google buys them. I mean, where does Twitter get all its money from? Eh?

Facebook is ambitious, and it’s willing to stand on its own two feet. That’s really admirable. And while I’m not an expert in either technology or betting, who is to say that Facebook won’t be one of the web’s very biggest companies in a couple of years time?

Update: Forgot to include a link to this post from a former social networks-skeptic who has joined Facebook.

Update: Would usually del.icio.us this, but it is quite salient to this post, so: Wisdump: The Ebb and Flow of Social Networking.

Sorry I’ve not been posting for the past couple of days. I’ve been keeping myself busy at some other place. More on that later. I will get round to everything I said I would though!

In the meantime, I have some thoughts on Facebook, which seems to have become a phenomenon over the past couple of months. Two or three months back it seemed to reach a tipping point. It is now no longer the preserve or procrastinating students.

Now Facebook seems to have made itself the social network to be on for sensible grown-up types. I heard it mentioned on the 6 O’Clock News recently — and that really is a sign, I think (have you ever heard LiveJournal (except in the context of “suicidal mad gunman had a LiveJournal”) or even Flickr mentioned on the news?).

It is easy to see why Facebook attracts that kind of audience. MySpace and Bebo are a full-on assault on the eyes (and sometimes ears), not to mention near enough impossible to navigate sensibly. Facebook has your profile in a pleasant blue interface which has a sensible, easy-to-use navigation system. Tweenagers may cry because they can’t put stupid pink glittery things on their profiles — but the rest of us are rejoicing.

But Facebook are not resting on the laurels of their new-found mega-popularity. Because it seems to me as though, of all the social networks out there, Facebook is the only one that does much in the way of innovation — and it does it by the bucketload.

When Facebook opened its doors to everyone, its current members (ie. students) were up in arms. But it turned out to be the key to the site’s eventual popularity.

When Facebook introduced its news feeds, people shrieked about the privacy concerns. But that was a storm in a teacup if ever there was one, because Bebo has subsequently made a weak copy of it without anyone batting an eyelid.

Also, the “privacy concern” completely ignored the fact that Facebook has awesome privacy features that I have never seen anywhere else. For a start, your profile is completely private to anyone outside your “network” (ie. university or geographical region). Then it can be private to people even inside your network. And then you can even have a “limited profile” so that you can even choose which of your friends has access to which information.

In fact, I feel so safe on Facebook that it is the only place on the web where I have ever posted my phone number. Many others even put their address on Facebook, and it doesn’t feel like a concern. Could you imagine putting your postal address on MySpace? I hardly think so.

Facebook’s latest rabbit out of the hat is its brilliant Facebook Platform, and Facebook Apps. They’re a bit like widgets of the sort that you can find on MySpace and Bebo — but really smartly done.

MySpace is famously annoying for having profiles with a million songs and videos autoplaying. Facebook has very cleverly prevented this from happening by requiring visitors to click before anything annoying happens (and then it’s your own fault damnit!). Just in the same way as Facebook has stopped users from having colour schemes that are like daggers in your eyes, they have sensibly taken precautions to make widgets not get in your way.

Once the initial excitement about Facebook Apps died down, I became a bit worried that Facebook would become a bit like MySpace, with annoying widgets in your face everywhere. But now I have no such concerns. I know I will still be able to visit a profile without being confronted by ugliness (I don’t mean the profile pics, BTW).

The other clever thing that Facebook have done is opening up widgets to everyone. On Bebo, the choice of widgets is really weak. If you really love dodgy Flash photo slideshows, you will love Bebo widgets. But anything apart from that? No luck. This is no doubt because, rather bureaucratically (although understandably, given security concerns there might be), Bebo only allows widgets with “approved partners”.

Yet, Facebook has developed a secure “platform” that allows me to embed my information from other websites like Twitter, del.icio.us and (belatedly) Last.fm. In the space of a week, I have not got everything I’ve wanted Facebook allow me to put on my profile.

A bit bizarrely, Facebook gave websites of arse drizzle prominence over Last.fm, who were not given advance notice of the Facebook Platform. Meanwhile, iLike was. Unfortunately, iLike is the most popular Facebook app at the moment. Everytime I see that “one of my friends has added iLike”, I think of this.

Inexplicably, Mog was also given advance notice. Mog is like Last.fm, but it does everything in a much less efficient and more invasive way. And it’s brown.

Anyway, despite the fact that I was unable to put Last.fm on my profile straight away, there is no doubt that Facebook have already set the standard when it comes to widgets — mostly because they have managed to make it so that it isn’t annoying. Widgets are hardly revolutionary. But Facebook have implemented them with such class that it feels revolutionary.

I suppose Facebook also deserve kudos for calling them “applications” rather than the literally meaningless “widgets” (or, even worse, “gadgets” on Windows Vista). Mind you, this is because Facebook say that their applications are more fully-featured that standard widgets anyway, because they integrate into the social graph, whatever that is.

I see it, because the Last.fm application lets me compare my music profile to that of others on Facebook who also use the Last.fm app. Apparently RSSbook shows you what RSS feeds your friends are subscribed to, and suggests feeds that might interest you based on that information.

It is not quite perfect. I would like my Twitter status to automatically become my Facebook status. I would prefer my del.icio.us links to be imported into my “posted items”. But I can understand why they have not allowed this.

All-in-all, sitting here today, it is difficult to see why anyone would want to sign up to a social network that isn’t Facebook. I’ll have more on this in my next post (because this one is already long enough).

Update: Part two has been posted here.