With sites like facebook.com and myspace.com taking over the Internet it makes it easier for people to keep in touch by leaving messages on each others “Walls” (facebook). What I notice is also that while this Web 2.0 concept is taking over, it makes it harder to be an outsider, by not having an account or just having a standalone blog of your own on the Internet.

As an example, my wife, sisters, brother and lots of friends all have facebook or myspace accounts. While almost not a week goes by without receiving invites to facebook or similar sites and despite verbal attempts of convincing me to join this movement from my wife and sisters, I am very content with just having a blog that I have full control over. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with these sites and while I am sure there are some valuable content being generated through this crowd sourcing, it does not really attract me since it a) does not give me full control over what I can do on it and being a techie I like being able to poke around things as much as I want to and b) being on such sites in my experience you also end up engaging in a lot of (semi addictive) frivolous activities, e.g. graffiti a friend’s wall or virtually poke each other, (which I am sure is fun, but I just don’t have the time for it).

So the question becomes, do you ignore the wisdom of these crowds and stay outside or do you go with if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them? While not joining these sites may not make me as visible or accessible to friends and other contacts who would like to get updates on my life and in turn also not give me access to theirs, some of which can be friends from a very long time ago that you wonder what they are up to these days, I think there is a middle ground and example of that can be another site like LinkedIn.com. That site may not be as ‘cool’ or happening as other fun social sites, but it gets the job done for me.

Or maybe take a more old-fashioned approach, find out their email or phone number and call/write them to get updates, but I guess in today’s world that can be a little passé, or better put, in a world where we travel a lot and its so easy to stay in touch through the Internet, we tend to have a large circle of contacts around the globe and we don’t necessarily have the time or are not that interested to do one on one emails/calls with them and are just content with coming across whatever they broadcast to the world about their lives.