I have not taken a photograph in ages. This is because I decided, quite wisely, that I am a shit photographer. However, even the crappest of photographers will luck in eventually if they point and click often enough, and so it turns out that one of my photographs has been included in the latest edition of the Schmap Glasgow Guide.

I have to confess to not having heard of Schmap before being included. But it seems pretty cool. It seems to be an online travel guide with helpful maps and photographs taken from Flickr. It’s funny to think of one of my photographs being included here, because there are some really awesome photographs among the selection.

The photograph of mine that has been included was one of the ones I took of House for an Art Lover, which I highly recommend visiting.

• House for an Art Lover
• Flickr page for the photograph

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.

Maybe I’m a bit slow, but I’ve just discovered that you can only easily view your latest 200 photos on Flickr if you don’t pay up. Isn’t that a bit rubbish?