Are you connected?

There was an interesting article in the Guardian last week, comparing different social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and Second Life. Facebook is similar to friends re-united, in that it allows you to search for your friends using their email address, name, or you can look people up by town, school or organisation. This is all very well and I have found old friends that I'd lost touch with. One thing that annoys me about it is that it asks you to enter favourite books, films, music into your profile, but doesn't let you pull this information in from www.librarything.com or other sites where you may have already set up this type of list.

MySpace does allow you to pull information in from other sites, but doesn't give you the privacy that Facebook does (in Facebook you can choose who can see which bits of info), and doesn't help you find lost friends in the same way. It does seem to work for making new contacts as people come together around similar interests, and has been very popular with up and coming bands.

I haven't tried Bebo, myself, but it sounds like fun as it as a white board your friends can draw on.

If you're a latecomer to social networking - this might be worth a read:
Guardian, 16 May 2007 Are you connected?