Social networking, room rearranging, "YouTube for Dummies," and so on

For some sudden reason, I have begun to consider joining a social networking site. For those who don't know what a social networking site is, basically it's a site that helps connect people with similar interests. Or as Wikipedia puts it (calling such sites "social network services"): "A social network service focuses on the building and verifying of online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others, and which necessitates the use of software."

Basically, social network sites are sites like MySpace, Facebook, Gaia Online, etc.

I know I do not want to join MySpace, even though I have real-life friends who are on MySpace. For some reason, I dislike MySpace. I think it is that people abuse it, but then people abuse everything. You should see the flaming comments I've gotten on YouTube on some of my videos.

I think I may join Facebook. Facebook is different than MySpace in some ways. First of all, it started out being targeted solely at college students, whereas MySpace has always been open to anyone 14 or over. While Facebook is now open to everyone, it still seems different than MySpace. For one, it is smaller -- boasting a mere about 59 million users to MySpace's 217 million. Sometimes a smaller user base is nicer. That has attracted me to Veoh, essentially a site like YouTube but smaller. Even the founder of Veoh sent me a friend request! Also Veoh is less strict than YouTube on what you can post. I haven't used it much -- it was meant to be an account to fall back on if YouTube deleted my account again, which I did for awhile, but now I am back on YouTube. I am going to use it soon for the Best of Fujiwara Zakuro Fandub Series, though, since YouTube has a right to ban videos containing content from the Tokyo Mew Mew episodes owned by 4Kids (eps 1-26). The episodes before episode 26 will be on Veoh, and the ones after episode 26 will be on YouTube.

But anyway back to Facebook. It is more about joining actual networks of people, based on region, workplace, college, or high school. There's even one for my high school (just checked); although you have to actually be in high school to join a high school network. My current college doesn't appear under "Colleges" but the one I'm trying to transfer to does.

It would be nice though if they had networks for people with similar interests. Kind of like how people create groups on YouTube.

I looked at Wikipedia's list of notable social networking sites and saw there were some which were subject-specific, including a few on books. I checked out the book ones. aNobii seems dull, but LibraryThing and Shelfari look cool, especially since you can show off books you own, have read, are reading, are planning to read, or want on a virtual shelf on Shelfari, and the shelf looks like a real shelf, and features pictures of the covers of the books on the shelf. Pretty neato. Both LibraryThing and Shelfari are basically for book lovers and allow you to catalog books you like and connect with other bibliophiles.

There were a couple unusual entries on the social network list -- MyChurch for instance (meant to be a Christian alternative to MySpace; and apparently, the conservative Christians out there didn't stop there -- there's also Conservapedia, an alternative to Wikipedia, and GodTube, an alternative to YouTube). I think that is a little extreme doing that, if you ask me.

Speaking of Christians and MySpace...Christian apparel company Kerusso is well-known for making shirts with a Christian message that spoof pop culture things. Anyway they made one about MySpace. It says "Jesus died for My Space in heaven." They also did a YouTube one that says "God wants You To be Saved" (with the "You To Be" styled like the YouTube logo). Here is a picture of the YouTube one:



Here's the MySpace one:



Anyway, besides that there was an unusual entry called "OUTeverywhere," targeted for homosexuals. Not going there for sure.

I was off of work today but I stayed home and spent most of the afternoon cleaning up my room so I could re-arrange things a little for when we bring the new bed in tomorrow. We're finally doing it -- it's about time. Technically, the bed's not new -- it was in Gran and Grandad's house -- but it's new for me. Plus it's bigger (a queen compared to the twin I have now), has drawers (yay, storage!), and has a SLEEP NUMBER MATTRESS (yay! a solution to my chronic lower back pain at last). The old bed was a pain in the butt to move from one wall to the other by myself, but I finally managed it. Now where my bed used to be (in the nook by the window) my small dresser sits, with my TV and VCR. I also put my lamp, my CD tower and CD boxes in the window area. I may re-arrange this stuff again once I know how much space the new bed takes up. In the drawers I am going to put the clothes that once filled my tall dresser. I emptied that today so we can take it away. I went through the clothes and then put them in a garbage bag to get them out of the way, along with some clothes that were cluttering up the top of my file cabinet, since I very often don't bother to actually put my clean laundry away and just dump it on some available flat, open space, like my bed.

I'm gonna go soon cause I'm tired and I think I may pack what I need for work tomorrow tonight when I have time to look for the stuff I took out of my work bag. I was scheduled to be off tomorrow, but Tori realized after the schedule was printed that she didn't have a closer tomorrow night, so she asked me in her usual way if I could do her a favor and come in for 5 hours tomorrow night. Since she's my boss and I have no legitimate plans to prevent me from working, I naturally was compelled to accept. An offer I could not refuse, to paraphrase Marlon Brando.

When at Barnes & Noble yesterday, I saw a really funny book in the computer books section. It was called YouTube for Dummies. I kid you not! Someone in the world of the Dummies books decided one should be written about YouTube, apparently, and judging from what I could see when I leafed through it, it is full of instructions for stuff that is really easy to just figure out on your own by browsing the site itself. Like how to rate a video. BASIC!

(edit) Here's a picture of the book to prove I'm really not joking:



I also saw some small pocket guide to iPods and iTunes on an endcap and looked at it. Judging from what I read about the different models in that book, I will probably get an iPod Nano or an iPod Classic if I get an iPod.

I e-mailed Cal State regarding my application. Now I'll just sit back and wait for a response.

Well I'm tired so I'll end here I think. Dang I started this around 8:30 but got distracted checking out Facebook, and then my computer froze up and I had to restart it, and then while waiting for Firefox to open again, I took a break and played the entire classic mode of Super Smash Bros. Melee on my GameCube (yeah, that's right, the entire classic mode. Let's face it, I'm fast).

Anyway, so good night, bonne nuit, buona notte, laila tov, o-yasumi, ar labu nakti, buenas noches.

(That's "good night" in English, French, Italian, Hebrew, Japanese, Latvian, and Spanish. Thanks to http://www.elite.net/~runner/jennifers/gnight.htm for some of those.)