Not-So-Social Networking

A few years ago, I had several Internet buddies.

They were scattered around the world, the closest being a girl just a few miles away that I was very friendly with for years but never met, and the furthest being a sweet but slightly bonkers girl in Thailand. There was also a woman in Prague, an Aussie in Germany and an interesting guy in Slovakia who I talked politics and current affairs with.

That’s what I saw the Internet as: an inherently social device, levelling all differences, shortening all distances. It wasn’t just an intricate web of computers, but also of people.

I gave out my MSN contact (censored@electro-web.co.uk) and ICQ number pretty much willy-nilly because I would enjoy there being someone to hold a conversation with anytime I logged on. Or I could block them, like the London woman who insinuated marriage after one or two occasions of exchanging pleasantries.

Indeed, it was through the internet I met most of my friends (and my now wife). I moved to Brighton, joined a local site and got to know people. We moved it from the screen to the pub pretty quickly.

But somehow, the Internet has got smaller. Despite all the continuing hype of social networks, that’s rarely what they are.

Facebook is diverting enough, though Twitter, Picassa/Flickr and delicious/digg/Google Reader do each of its functions better individually and in a way open to non-Facebook users. But it’s not social; it merely keeps me in touch with my own current friends and I was doing that anyway.

Yes, I’ve got old Uni friends on there, but it hasn’t led to a reignited friendship even though I know what some of them had for breakfast.

All these people I already knew/know and it would be an odd breach of etiquette to be added by a total stranger. The Facebook tools aren’t even designed for that: there’s no real way to get to know someone, merely to stay in touch. Myspace is slightly better, but only marginally.

I miss meeting new online buddies in odd corners of the world.

The tools to do it have gone: I’ve not used it for years, but IQC’s “I’m here and bored, come and say hi” webpage has long since disappeared. Skype’s similar but less obvious “Skype Me” status has gone (though I always found the Skype concept a little too intimate for that). While many sites foster an inward community, it rarely spills out of the specific site anymore.

In short, social networking isn’t.

I’d love to know of chat clients or
online communities that encourage us to connect to new people and start learning things outside our own social sphere and our own country again.

And no, hotsweetcandy18xxx@aol.com, I don’t mean you even if you have got a cam.