I've recently had many friends of mine say they are deleting their MySpace profiles. I loved MySpace when it came out, I had just moved and it was a great place to share photos, stay in touch with old friends, and network with new friends. In fact, if you weren't even sure if you were just 'acquaintances' or real friends, MySpace would tell you- you're friends! My MySpace has been left untouched for perhaps over a year, and the rash of friends who are deleting theirs is making me thingk the same..
It made me think about the quickly shifting paradigms for Internet Social Networking. First seemed to be Friendster, which I never knew about, and LiveJournal, which I did know about. Then MySpace was literally, THE place to be online socially: It combined the networking capabilities of Friendster with the personal information posting of LiveJournal, and added a fun user profile setup. The came Facebook, easier to use, with apps and games. Now Twitter, a new PR tool, helping celebrities appear to have 'personal' communications with us, in a mass setting under 140 words. Oprah even did an entire show on Skype, the free worldwide video conferencing site. It's interesting to think about what these sites offer that are new, and what it is they are trying to capture about human socialization that we long for so much.