Giving in to Facebook Mania

I tend to try and avoid writing about anything that’s already been covered ad nauseum elsewhere (you’ll be hard pressed to drag an iPhone post out of me, unless it’s to be critical of the enormity of the hype-machine surrounding it).

But I’ve got to admit: I’ve finally signed up for Facebook, and I absolutely love it. Where have I been?

When I get around to penning my memoirs, I think I will officially mark down this day as “Social Media Expansion Day.” After weeks of putting it off despite all the hoopla and praise I’ve been seeing throughout my RSS reader, I broke down and gave in to Facebook this morning. After that, I got a Pownce invite, so I set myself up over there as well (much less enthusiastically, however).

First things first: I really don’t understand how some of us, my utterly indefatigable boss, for example, can keep up with all these sites. It takes so much time not only to set up a profile, but then to browse groups, networks, events, applications, videos and all the other myriad content available on Facebook alone. And then there’s doing all the searches for the contacts you’d like to add. How can anyone have the time to delve this extensively into more than one site (without losing their jobs or spouses, that is)? 

That being said, I am hooked. I’d intended to use Facebook as a professional contacts page, already maintaining a MySpace page for keeping in tough with personal friends. But I can absolutely see myself abandoning MySpace altogether in favor of Facebook—that is, just saying “to heck with it” and blending my professional and personal online worlds, embarrassing photos be darned.

Is it the newness that’s drawing me in, or are the features available on Facebook genuinely better? I can’t decide, but I’m leaning towards the latter.

As for Pownce…I’m not overy impressed so far (but that could just be because it apparently refuses to upload a photo for me, no matter how many times I try). 

The design is simple and cute, if a little twee (do I really want to be known as a “27-year old chickie poo”?), and I like the idea of the downloadable desktop feature (perhaps some of my tech-nerdier comrades can fill me in on why it is such a big deal that the desktop component uses AIR?).

But as someone who has yet to sign on to the Twitter craze…how necessary are sites like this? When I come across a link I want to share, I post it here. Or on PR Blog Jots. Or on my personal blog. Or I email it. How many different ways do we need to say exactly the same thing? It all just seems extraneous.

Let’s face it, someone had to get out there and compete with Twitter. But I am not sure if Pownce will develop the same buzz. I suppose we’ll just have to see.

Technorati tags: Facebook; Pownce; Twitter; Chip Griffin