Social Networking. Why facebook is safer than myspace

My wife has been spreading herself all over, from MySpace, to Facebook. Blog here, blog there. Hubs hubs hubs. Twitter to Skype. I just couldn’t get the hype.

I tried MySpacefor a few months. When you first join, you get assistance, help and regular updates via the MySpace support group under the guise of a virtual "Friend" named Tom.

You invite and search for people you know (and don't) to be in your "Friends" list.

You can leave little messages on the page and use whatever saying popped into your head at the time.

There is a box to let friends know your mood.

You can design your page using hundreds of pre-made backgrounds based on your taste. If you are just a little computer savvy, you can design your own layouts. I loved making my own backgrounds and themes. You can pick the songs you want to have playing when people view your page. I started making little animated pictures (Gif. files) to use for my profile picture and would change them according to the current “Theme” of the page, or to the beat of the music.

This offered almost limitless possibilities. I could pair a background picture of London in the rain, with Singing in the Rain. Or perhaps an Old Victorian postcard as the background image with a little bit of Ragtime music. On Valentines day I really decked it out, with beautiful images, poems of my own devise, and some of our romantic favorites. Sometimes I would change my whole page daily, pending on my mood or latest artistic inspiration. I found that I had developed a small cult following checking in daily just to see what came next.

It came with an instant messenger. You could have private "Chats" if you noticed one of your friends on line.

And of course you could leave comments. You could leave your own or pick from thousands of pre-made comments ranging from tasteful to downright awful. I could always post the little videos that I had uploaded to Youtube.

It is decent social networking site and allowed me quite the creative license.

Then my wife goaded me into facebook.

I thought, what, talk to people that I lost track of, and shoot them with stew from a water blaster? I lost track of them for a reason! At first I piddled. Then as time wore on, I started spending more time. I actually found some people from my past that I liked. Wondered what they were up to. What did they turn out like. I have even made new "cyber" friends from other countries.

You get almost instant updates from all of your friends. You could join groups for whatever cause you were interested in, play games, take quizzes. I found some of the quizzes to be fun, others questionable to say the least. Who were you in a past life? I kept coming up as Queen Elizabeth I. I resented that. There are any number of quizzes, from "What Beatles song are you", "What Star Wars character are you" and "Which painting are you",. On "Which painting are you", I got Monet's Water Lilies. I could live with that. The list goes on and on. You can “poke” your friends. Every thing from the placid and well mannered to flirty and bawdy. You can send hugs, blow a kiss and even fling a thong at them!

You can also share almost anything on the web. Post the latest article from your favorite news service, Videos from Youtube, updates from groups that you belong to. “The Zoo will be having a wine tasting event from 7:00 to 9:00 pm. this Sat”. Even your favorite Hubs! I post a link to some of my favorites so that my friends can check them out. If they like it, they can re-post it to all of their friends. I recently had a friend send me a link to their latest hub. I was updated instantly.

Eventually I checked in twice daily, and for longer and longer stretches of time. I spent way too much time on it. It was fun, but it ended up not being as satisfying as spending my time reading a book, or messing about with pictures, surfing for facts and tidbits on the Internet.

Then my wife kept showing me hubs. Then more hubs. I became hooked on reading them. With some of the hubs, the comments took on a life of their own.

I still check into facebook several times a day, but do not spend quite as much time it as I used to.

E- Preditors Beware-

When I first signed up for MySpace, I had two friends, my Wife and Tom. I started getting these things saying, "One of your friends has a crush on you." I thought, how cute. My wife hasn't felt that way in quite some time. Perhaps I could rekindle the old flames and get a little action going. I started courting her again.

{The dictionary defines courting as--
1): To try to gain the love or affections of, especially to seek to marry.
2): To attempt to gain the favor of by attention or flattery
3): Zoology- To behave so as to attract (a mate).}

I am already married so I thought I could use the second one to get to the third one. Oh yeah. I could use a little "Mating" action.

My wife enjoyed the extra attention and E-flirting to a degree, but when asked about the "Crush" she did not fess up. At first I thought she was being shy. Then I accused her of being Coy. I found myself frustrated

Then it dawned on me.... I have heard of things like this at work. Around the break table I have overheard some of the "hourly employees", as I eavesdrop on them to find out about "employee morale", talking about Jerry Springer and "Oh girl, my cousins babies daddy had that happen to his girlfriends nephew, you know, the one that lives upstairs from the beauty parlor." I didn't know what to do.

It had to be this Tom person. He seemed to know a lot about technical stuff... He was a sexual E-predator! At first I was afraid to Google the subject. I was sure that Tom had placed some sort of "Spyware" on my laptop. Oh my god. Did he have control of my built in Web Cam? I had to do something. I logged onto the "guest account" on my computer. I figured that might throw him off long enough for me to do a Google search.

What I found on my 3rd search, both astounded and frightened me. People had been deleted. This Tom was more powerful than I thought. I went back to my old activist days. Make a lot of noise, they cant hit you while your in the spotlight. Get a Grass roots action going! That proved to be much harder then it was back in my "Hippie Daze". All people seemed to be worrying about at the time was, "Taking it to a higher level". "A change in America", and some "Maverick" and that lady from SNL running for Vice President because she saw "Russians in her back yard."

Everyone was occupied with this whole hoopla. Even some plumber named Joe. I thought all plumbers were worried about was where to find their next bottle. Even they were sucked into this whole cult like election phenomenon. What about me? The people?

I would get no help from regular society.

I had to go "Underground" for help. I had to go to the nerds. One told me that Tom was a level 32 Grand Mage and I would need an army of Orcs with at least a level 17 thief and a .......I had to end the chat on this one.

The next one told me the force was too strong with Tom, and my Jedi mind tricks would not work. Damn. (How did he know about my Jedi mind trick anyways?).

Finally I found a true computer hackers site online, with all sorts of codes like HTML and XML and .......CSS. I found the code to "Remove" Tom from my friends. Yeah Baby. TAKE THAT! How do you like that one "Sunny Jim"?

I was safe. I could once again surf in peace. Oh, I still get the occasional message saying one of my friends has a crush on me. Its probably just one of the Band members in "The Livers". You know how those musicians can be. I won't click into the message cause I don't want my wife to find out. But I secretly smile and I am flattered to know, one of my friends has a crush on me.

It never hurts to look at the bottom of the page. Who knows what you will find!