Where is Adam (online)? My participation in and thoughts about various presence/sharing services

In case you're interested in stalking me and/or knowing what my thoughts are on
various online presence / networking / bookmarking sites I have tried, here's a
(completely unscientific, wholly biased, unabashedly uncomprehensive, and
generally of questionable use) list :-D



FYI, I'm findable via my full name on the services below unless noted
otherwise.  And sites owned/operated by Google are indicated by [g], as a
brief disclaimer/reminder since I work for Google (but not on any of the
products or product-types below).

Social networking

• 
  Facebook
  - a social networking site which used
  to be used primarily by college students (perhaps still is) and is gaining
  fame and respect in new quarters
  
  It's my favorite social networking service by far. I belong to the
  Google, San Francisco, Indiana University, and Northwestern University
  groups, and generally only add friends, co-workers, professional
  acquaintances I know decently well from meeting in person, and so on.
  I've actually found this to be useful not for making
  new friends, but rather for catching
  interesting info and fun tidbits and insights into my current friends'
  lives. I am impressed with nearly all aspects of this site: the strong
  configurability of privacy options, the reasonably-clean and standardized
  views*, decent navigability, and overall utility. I haven't really
  gotten into the groups, though, which mostly seem like exercises in humor
  and/or vanity.
  
  *This just in: According to Eliot on Wired,
  Facebook
  may be opening up its profile pages to widgets. Given the smart
  people I know that have recently been hired to work at Facebook, I can only
  hope that the service won't be horrifically MySpaced (uglified to hell and
  made practically unusable). But hey, if things turn south, I'll at least
  have people I can poke about it!
  
  
  
  


• 
  Friendster
  - one of the first social networking
  sites, now apparently a haven for lonely Filipinos.
  
  I have an account here, but almost never log in. Some nice
  integration, I suppose, but nothing that really interests me. The
  brash obnoxious ads are a turnoff. And regarding the demographic reference... it's more a puzzled commentary on how various services (Orkut, Friendster, probably others) end up becoming so particularly popular in a handful of countries. I suppose much of this could be explained by the network effect (e.g., some popular Filipinos became active on Friendster, invited their friends...), but I can't help but wonder if UI / User Experience interlaces in interesting way with cultural preferences and expectations. Put more pedestrianly... I wonder what it is about, say, Friendster that causes it to appeal so much to Filipinos? (and Orkut to Brazillians, etc.) I bet someone has studied this. Paging danah...? :-D
  
  
  
  


• 
  Orkut
  - a quirky social networking
  experiment by a Google engineer, now noted for its loyal userbase outside of
  the USA.
  
  Ah, not much to say about the service at this point. I no longer use
  it, but hey, many many millions of people around the world love it.
  
  
  
  


• 
  Multiply
  - What's a total of seventeen users
  times practically zero awareness? Join this service to find
  out!
  
  Seemed interesting initially, but it was hobbled by a confusing interface and an
  anemic adoption rate. I think maybe two of my friends at most use this
  service nowadays.
  
  
  
  


• 
  MySpace
  - Just like what you'd get if
  you had a spastic monkey doing design, an evil genius devising navigation (how
  many ad views per simple action?), and a bunch of lemmings for
  fans.
  
  Aaaaagh! Make it stop. Make it stop! At least make it stop
  blinking-spazzing-playing-seven-clips-simultaneously and generally serving
  as an affront to aesthetics, art, common sense, and humanity. To
  preserve what's left of my sanity, I prefer to view the success of this
  monstrosity as due purely to the network effect (it was an early entrant,
  everyones' friends were on MySpace, yadda yadda). Anything else is
  just too depressing. And yes, I have an account here only so my
  surprisingly-less-enlightened friends will quit bugging me to establish one,
  so I suppose that makes me mildly hypocritical.
  
  
  
  


• 
  Tribe
  - Want to meet artsy, hippie, burning-man
  types? This is your scene :-D
  
  I like the threadedness of the message forums, but the site feels a bit
  cluttered and unfocused. Plus... again, sorry to bring up the network
  effect, but... most of my friends outside of the Bay Area are elsewhere online.
  
  

Professional networking

• 
  Ecademy
  - The professional networking site
  that's the non-American version of LinkedIn. But more
  expensive.
  
  Tried it once. Was annoyed at the apparent lack of any free level of
  service, so that was the end of that. I didn't see anything about this
  service worth paying for that I couldn't find via other online or offline
  means.
  
  
  
  


• 
  Ryze
  - "Hi, I'm a stay-at-home
  marketer. Would you like to join the most amazing wealth creation
  scheme that combines hot dogs, Buddhist monks, and..."
  
  Used to use this professional networking service quite a bit, but now it
  feels relatively empty and multi-level-marketing focused.
  
  
  
  


• 
  LinkedIn
  - Like any other powerful tool online
  or offline; great if you use it wisely, potentially painful if you
  don't.
  
  I like this service overall. I've not used it much for my own
  networking, but I have definitely been pleased to help others... pass along
  legitimate requests, and so on. The key is not treating it like
  MySpace (adding everyone who requests you to add them), but rather
  judiciously linking to people you trust and who trust you... ideally, folks
  you have professional ties with or
  can similarly vouch for.
  
  

Resource sharing / reviewing / bookmarking

• 
  CitySearch
  - Big, colorful, commercial, and
  overstuffed site that features user-submitted reviews on restaurants,
  hairdressers, etc.
  
  Used to use this, but have moved over to Yelp, which seems -- if not more
  accurate -- at least more interesting, more entertaining, and slightly-less
  cluttered and commercial.
  
  
  
  


• 
  Del.icio.us
  - Lamely named social bookmarking
  site that's been (sort of) superceded by more robust and feature-rich
  offerings and is now owned by Yahoo
  
  The geek "Web 2.0" (ack, I feel dirty already) crowd latched onto this early
  on, and I never quite got the appeal. Other services have offered
  considerably more features... of particular note, the ability to take a
  searchable "snapshot" of the page when it's bookmarked for easier retrieval
  later. On the flip side, this site had (and still has) an admirably
  spartan feel to it. No ads (that I can see), and no clutter. For
  those who crave APIs, minimalist feature sets, and simple bookmark sharing,
  del.icio.us could still be a reasonably good pick.
  
  
  
  


• 
  Digg
  - Watch out, here comes the highly-opinionated and non-buying mobs! (is so! is not! yeah, well, your
  mamma was an SEO! LOLZ!!!!!!!1)
  
  Okay, so perhaps that's a bit unfair. Digg was an interesting
  idea and still continues to surface some noteworthy or at least entertaining
  sites. But, as with many fine ideas, it's been creaking at the seams
  due to its mass adoption and resultant oft-moblike/groupthink feel.
  Anyway, I no longer check this site with any regularity... not enough time,
  too poor signal/noise ratio.
  
  
  
  


• 
  Google
  Reader -
  An outstanding feed-reader that's easy and
  fun to use
  
  Sure, I'm biased, but after an unsuccessful first version, the Reader
  team's got their groove goin' on. Nifty keyboard shortcuts (hit
  ? to see 'em!), a pleasant UI, and
  the capability (which I sadly haven't used yet) to make any of your
  tags/folders publicly-viewable. Now if they'd just combine this with a
  public-version of Google Bookmarks... :-D [g]
  
  
  


• 
  StumbleUpon
  - A serendipitous and often wondrous
  way to surf the Web and discover cool stuff
  
  I shied away from this service for ages; I don't have time to
  aimlessly "stumble" around the Web! But I've been slowly using it
  more, and finding it has useful features and unearths cool sites for me :-D.
  [My
  Stumbleupon page]
  
  
  
  


• 
  Yelp
  - Irreverent, sometimes painfully hip, but
  typically entertaining and often useful
  
  Want consistently unbiased and deeply thoughtful reviews of restaurants and
  other local places? Then Yelp may or may not be your cup of tea.
  But if you're patient and have a good sense of humor, you can often glean
  quite a bit of helpful info about various places around town. The
  conversations in the Talk section can be surprisingly cathartic, friendly,
  and even useful.
  [My reviews]
  
  
  
  

Photo sharing

• 
  Flickr
  - The most active and diverse photo sharing
  site I've ever seen, with a doggedly committed community-oriented
  management
  
  Sure, they've gotten a lot of flack after getting absorbed by Yahoo.
  Yes, like on any user-generated-content-site, there's bound to be crap,
  controversy, jerk-offs, and so on. But that aside, Flickr undeniably
  has an astounding number of gorgeous, hilarious, and downright captivating
  photos taken by talented photographers as active members. And speaking
  of active members... the Flickr crowd is hugely loyal, passionate, and not
  shy :-D.
  [My
  photos]
  
  
  
  


• 
  Fotki
  - The skinnable and surprisingly easy-to-use
  popular photo site you've never heard of
  
  Sets within sets! While Flickrites are
  still begging for this, Fotki's had
  it for ages. It also has journals and a bunch of other doodads that
  are done better elsewhere, but thankfully that stuff doesn't clutter up the
  simple-yet-powerful photo interface. $30/year gets you unlimited storage and
  very cheap (and good!) prints.
  [My
  photos]
  
  
  
  


• 
  PicasaWeb
  - Jarringly basic and spartan for geeks,
  surprisingly easy-to-use for normal people (who just want to easily share
  their photos with their family)
  
  Want to join a feature-rich photo site with great sense of community?
  This ain't it. But it's reliable and -- as a very nice bonus -- you
  can upload your videos to be displayed within your galleries (Google Video
  style). Best hidden feature: use the right and left arrow keys to zoom
  through galleries and enjoy the pre-caching and the
  perfect-fit-to-your-display views.
  [My
  Photos] [g]
  
  
  
  


• 
  Honorary mention:
  Smugmug
  - I've never used it, but really like the attitude of its CEO and the
  intense, friendly customer-focus he has pushed throughout his company.
  
  
  

Instant messaging

• 
  Trillian
  (my choice at home) - Offered in both a free
  and more-powerful $25/year version, Trillian is mostly reliable and
  amazingly handy
  
  No matter how much I try to convince all my friends to use Google Talk
  ("GTalk"), a ton of 'em still insist on sticking with Yahoo! Messenger, AIM,
  or -- dog forbid -- MSN Messenger! A few of them even still use their
  AOL accounts for e-mail; I've disowned those folks... but hey, I digress
  those other apps at the same time and having my computer grind to a halt, I
  use Trillian at home, which automatically logs me into all the networks and
  displays my buddies in a totally customizable and wonderfully compact
  single-column view. Downside? Sometimes connectivity to
  different networks is flakey. And though they promise a Web-based
  version Real Soon Now (tm), it's seemingly impossible at present to easily
  sync one's Trillian account across computers, so your chat history gets
  split between your desktop and laptop and so on. But hey, one app to
  rule them all? Pretty damn useful!
  
  
  
  


• 
  Google
  Talk (my choice away from home) -
  Simple, great voice quality, usefully
  integrated into Gmail (and elsewhere).
  
  It's lightweight, fast, and just
  works. I really like how chats are (optionally) archived in my
  Gmail account, so I don't have to remember whether I e-mailed a friend or
  chatted with her about an upcoming party... I can do one search and know for
  sure that I forgot to invite her! [g]
  
  
  
  

Other

• 
  Plaxo
  - "I'm updating my addressbook..."
  aaaaagh! Thankfully, Plaxo is much, much more than this.
  
  This is one of those sites despised by many geeks and, in fairness,
  journalists and other popular peeps who at least previously got deluged by
  the perfect storm created by clueless n00bs and a suboptimal viral approach
  pushed by Plaxo in the early days. With an improved emphasis on
  improving the existing network rather than wildly expanding it, Plaxo is now
  increasingly loved by millions of folks (like me!) who appreciate the
  service's (mostly free) offerings. The core feature which I use and
  find invaluable is the sync'ing of my friends' contact info into my various
  addressbooks. Plaxo has recently announced that their upcoming 3.0
  version (ah, gotta love engineers' creative naming skills) will also support
  Gmail addressbooks. w00t!!! Disclaimer: I was a contractor
  with Plaxo a couple of years ago.
  
  
  
  


• 
  Twitter
  - Look, I'm having a cheese
  sandwich! I just burped. I tat i taw a putty kat! i'm a
  twit therefore i am. Just got my cell phone bill, lemme open it up
  and... AAAAAAAGH!
  
  Twitter -- the oft-stultifyingly boring but
  oh-so-Web-2.0-utility
  that lets you, uh, share "what are you doing now?" ("I'm picking my nose,
  but it's really hard to do while typing...") Maybe it'd be more
  interesting if I had more friends on it. Feel free to twit (?) me at
  http://www.twitter.com/thatadamguy.