By now, you know that Friendster is erasing pretty much everything anyone’s posted there, clearing the decks on May 31st and converting to some sort of “social gaming destination”; accounts will be kept alive, but everything else, like blog posts and photos and stuff, will be wiped away. And, yes, the consensus reaction has been “wait, Friendster still exists?” Indeed, but nobody went there anymore, or would admit to it.
I never did sign up for Friendster. I don’t remember why; I was aware of it, but I guess I didn’t see the point at the time. Same for Bebo and Orkutt. I had a MySpace page for about a month and deleted it because I got a headache just looking at it. But I’ve signed up for other flashes in the pan, and the Friendster news got me thinking about the many social networking accounts I have that are just sitting there someplace lonely and filled with shadows and echoes. I signed up for Plurk, which was sort of a Twitter that… well, I’m not sure, other than that someone I know touted it as better than Twitter. I think I checked it twice. Out of curiosity, I just logged in to see what was happening and found that a) I hadn’t logged in since September 2008, b) I’d “plurked” once, and c) My “Karma,” whatever that is, is 0.00. I assume that’s bad. Also, Plurk thinks I’m in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I’m not.
FriendFeed was another one, and that was recommended as taking Twitter and adding the ability to have conversations threaded from tweets and blog posts. That sounded appealing, but in practice, it was just another thing requiring logging in and paying attention and, well, I just don’t have the time. So my FriendFeed’s plugging along without me. If anyone’s commenting on anything I write, I’m not seeing it. No time.
Google Buzz? Tried it. Didn’t see the need. Stopped paying attention. I don’t remember.
You get the idea. I signed up for practically everything, so many that I don’t even remember. So did you. And there are still people using Jaiku and there must be some people still using Friendster and Plurk and every other site that might be lumbering along like the Living Dead. Somewhere on the Internet, it’s still 2003.
What about you? Do you still have accounts you haven’t looked at in years? Talk about your zombie accounts in the comments.
I was just reading through my LiveJournal site from high school. That crap belongs in a paper diary. Which can be burned. Not on the internet for your adult self to look back on and shake their head. However! My first website from age 13 or so, awesome… a page dedicated to an old mtv show called sifl and olly (I’m sure some other folks remember that!) There’s an old Friendster page I even wrote “I never check this thing” on, the Twitter account I used maybe 5 times to talk about food on, and the linkedin page that reminds me how much I dislike networking. That will become a zombie. I liked reading about everyone else’s zombie accounts 🙂
When I was in college the trendy trendy thing that popped up even before friendster and myspace was makeoutclub.com I looked and my profile is still up:
http://www.makeoutclub.com/tenfold
I looked nothing like it does now, which is just an even jankier looking myspace. Somehow it has where I am now (NYC) as apposed to where I went to school. Not sure how they got that info.
I gotta get that gone.
Man…there has to be at least three yahoo email accounts that just ended up turning into spam collectors so I used the purged earth strategy and just stopped used them and went with a new email account.
I’m pretty sure I have a livejournal still and a myspace page, but I rarely ever check them…of course a ton of yahoo groups that I joined and then never went back to. I used to IM a lot too, but stopped doing that after a while. A few web forums that I frequented either just don’t exist anymore, or if they don’t I’ve haven’t been there in years.
I have to use IM for my other work – AIM – but that seems to be the primary application for IM these days (except for the kids who use BlackBerry Messenger). I still have Yahoo and MSN IM accounts, although I don’t think I’ve ever used them and I’m not even sure what my user name would be…
I still use ICQ, because I have one friend on it who I chat to regularly. But I use it within Trillian just so I have other IM services available. Not that anybody uses them anymore either.