Blogs as Interactive Personal Ads

Posted on August 26, 2005

There are now daily articles in newspapers covering the interactions occuring on social blogging networks like MySpace.com and Xanga. Lately, some of these articles have focused on blogs as personal ads. An article from the Pacific News Service calls this kind of blog an impersonal personal.

This new social scene is getting out of control. Instead of meeting people normally we cruise the online profiles -- Friendster, MySpace, Xanga and Facebook-- for random people. These sites are supposed to keep friends connected, but I see people with about 100 plus "friends." Do they actually know these people? I can't count 100 people I know in the real world, much less people whose profiles I can access.
One thing I've noticed about the blogs and personal profiles people post online is how open people are, which I'm semi-guilty of myself. I find myself stumbling on to total stranger's site, and the next thing I know, I'm exploring his most intimate thoughts. It feels kind of stalkerish, like the public domain has gotten just a little too public -- even for the web. Sure, hooray for public expression, but there are some things which no one should know. Seriously.

We also covered blogs used for dating in an earlier post. Most blogs used for this purpose are generally found on the social networking websites. Social networking hubs are nothing new but the growing trend is resurfacing in articles now that most of the social networking websites have added tools to allow people to have a blog as part of their profile. If the trend continues these blogs could pose a threat to more established web dating services like Match.com and Matchmaker.