August 22, 2007

To stay in touch

Friend sends me a bit of email saying, sign up for LinkedIn/Facebook/Orkut/Myspace. Doesn't matter which or who, I've got requests like this for all of those from various friends, some more than once.

I sign up, laboriously.

Same friend sends me a LinkedIn/Facebook/Orkut/Myspace message/scrap/add-request/writes on my wall, saying "Here's an interesting way to stay in touch."

Why? Friend had my email address, right? And I have friend's email address, right? So why would I want to give up the considerable hassle of sending email back and forth, for the pure simplicity and convenience of connecting to a website, signing in (using my email address, more's the irony), clicking on "scraps" or "wall" or whatever, and then reading a message that says "Heyyyy-y dude! how're things?"

Yeah, I haven't figured it out either.

4 comments:

gaddeswarup said...

Are those letters really from from friends or spam? I assumed that they were spam and ignored them.

Anonymous said...

>>Yeah, I haven't figured it out either.

Me neither. But there seems to be a lot more to those social networking sites than just exchanging messages. Sharing your music, for example.

Bug said...

Hey,
I enjoy reading your blog - though I dont get to reading it regularly (I can't think so often!).

I agree with the "email is enough to keep in touch" but I think I'm finally catching on to how scrapping works :). I think scraps fill in a niche area where you care enough for a person to "keep in touch" but as yet have nothing substantial to talk about. It is usually someone you've just been introduced to by a friend or someone you knew long ago. In both cases, you could get over initial awkwardness with passing around small sentences and answering mean questions. Sometimes you could even graduate from this gap to have enough to fill an email.

Dunno if I make sense :)- but I finally have something to say so here goes! :D

Prasoon said...

Nice write Dilip :)
Completely identified with it - for now, am loving facebook not for the wall or scraps but apps/games which I play with my friends.
Scrabble being the best timepass :)

Wanna join in ;-) ?