89%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Am I really that addicted? Are you that addicted? I can’t wait to see what Barry’s score is.

Oh, and if you want to know how safe my blog is for younger audiences, here’s the rating:

[via Mingle² - Online Dating]

Ever since I was a pre-teen (it’s really been that long), I was immersed in social media to some extent. From chat rooms to forums to instant messaging and now to web 2.0 sites and social networks, I’ve been through it all — from alpha, to beta, to final — and then some. I’m at the point where I am bewildered by the amount of people joining and wondering if I should let everyone have access to every part of my life — since right now, most (all?) of it is online. This issue has become a lot more prevalent as I see people take advantage of social networks because they are so easy to sign up to and manipulate for personal gain.

A recent study performed by Ph.D. student Danah Boyd and covered by BBC News has determined that there is a “sharp division along class lines among the American teenagers flocking to the social network sites.” Boyd claims that Facebook users are primarily from wealthier homes and have a greater chance of attending college, whereas MySpace users graduate high school and go straight into the workforce.

As a college graduate and early adopter of Facebook (in 2004), I could definitely see that. But there are other factors at play here that may not necessarily have been considered when Boyd began her studies.

Initial audience. While MySpace was immediately open to all users, Facebook attracted college students first from the most prestigious universities. Why did I join in 2004? It was a real private but promising social network. Early adopters felt that the most elite students were given a sneak peek to the social site that would soon blossom.

And it kept getting bigger, but only for college kids.

I think this actually had a substantial effect on Facebook attracting the “wealthier, college-bound” crowd.

Today, DazzlinDonna wrote a very timely piece on social network spammers. It’s been so applicable lately as I’m beginning to be befriended by anyone and everyone on just about every social network.

In the past several weeks, my Twitter accounts have been friended up by porn solicitors and people looking to market websites that I’m just not interested in. My Flickr friends, on the other hand, are only friending up people who are obviously female. And let’s not forget MyBlogLog spam, though it’s gotten much better lately, and Orkut spam.

I got my first bit of Facebook spam in December. Today, it overflowed to the friend realm. These look like link exchange emails. Here’s my most recent friend request:

Hi happy
nice meet to you
i am randomly invitation through your friend
i want to have a good friend
thank you.

Thanks… but uh, no thanks.

(On a similar note, I got a bit of Digg spam lately too in the form of comments on my blog:

Really, thanks for spamming your story. Most stories on Digg, however, get promoted within the initial 24 hours, not 5 days later.

As many of you know, Google and eBay are not on the best of terms right now. At the recent eBay Live event in Boston, some Googlers tried to crash eBay’s party by holding their own Google Checkout Freedom Party to persuade Paypal users to switch to Google Checkout. (The party was since cancelled.) However, the damage was done. eBay pulled its Google ads on AdWords, which resulted in losses for Google of $26 million monthly (or $312 million annually).

Truthfully, the situation is a mess. As many people said, it was very unprofessional of Google to hold their own party in the vicinity of the competition.

The google protest party is in pretty bad taste. Very unlike them..

Google was doing just fine with eBay’s competition. eBay was doing just fine without Google’s competition. All in all, they coexisted and the world was a happy place.

And then this happened.

But what about its aftermath? After eBay had its rift with Google, its traffic actually went up. Bill Tancer of Hitwise confirms this fact, but then says something rather substantial:

25% of eBays search traffic from Google (and thats just the top 5 words) comes from brand, domain or navigational searches for eBay (e.g. “ebay,” “ebay.com” “www.ebay.com”).