It isn’t that I’ve died, although I’ve been away from this site for awhile. Rather, I’ve signed up for some of these time-waster Web 2.0 social networking sites. So in addition to Flickr, which I’ve had forever — 18 months at least — now I’ve begun to use del.icio.us pretty seriously, and I’ve gotten a Backpack site and Facebook and Twitter accounts. (Why they invented tabbed browsers.) So if you’re curious what I’m up to, that’s what.

Quick impressions: Twitter is just right.

I don’t like Facebook much. It’s got that gated-community (“franchulate”) vibe, which is irritating. Also, it’s way too ambitious. Comparing it to Twitter is like comparing Yahoo! to Google circa 1998: an overdone “portal” vs. a clean and elegant search engine. Today, Google can get away with doing everything, because they’re bloody geniuses. Facebook? Eh. For them it’s 1998, and they should realize it.

Backpack, I’m not sure about. The potential is there for me to do something useful with it, but I haven’t, so far.

On the other hand, they’re social networking sites, so they have a lot (“almost everything”) in common with pyramid schemes. I don’t want to go invite all my buddies to join your site, thank you very much. I actually like the no-strings commitment free approach of blogs, myself: surf over there, read it, and be on your merry way. Bookmark it if you like it, or move along if you don’t.