Linked in

I've always thought linked in was pretty stupid. Facebook for dorks I called it.  Unfortunately, for better or worse, it's a necessary business evil.  Probably a useless evil in all honesty, but nonetheless people deem it useful.  Now they have endorsements. So people can "endorse" your skills in your field. For example, if you are a lawyer you can get endorsed for "contract law, negotiation, subrogation, litigation" or if you're an architect your friends can endorse you for skills in which they have no authority to judge your skill level.  I am pretty sure it has the opposite effect.  To me, the more endorsements you have, the less credibility you have.  Keep that in mind.

Titles

I was just looking through some of my Linkedin connections. Let me just state for the record, Linkedin is Facebook for dorks as I've said before. It's like everything that's bad about a networking event . It's your title and everything stupid about you written right on your sleeve. It's funny and annoying. But I like seeing my 30 year old friends that have titles like "Senior Account Executive", or Vice President of such and such. Now, I'm pretty sure they don't own the company, and I'm pretty sure "senior" used to imply experience or at least more than 3 years of doing whatever they do. Now that I think of it, I wonder how come businesses only use titles like president, and vice president. Why aren't people Chancellor or Prime Minister of something? Senior Vice chancellor of Marketing.

Social Network

It's depressing to think while that lame kid Mark Zuckerberg was making Facebook and consequently millions of dollars,I was playing Snood on some kid's computer down the hall trying to get the highest score so I could leave a crass comment that would stay on his computer until he could beat my score.

Texting vs. Status updates

I used to be way more into Facebook. Like I was addicted to it, just like everyone else I know. Went cold turkey for a little over a month and I didn't really miss it. Then went back to it just because it's a good way to share pictures more than anything. I rarely do status updates just because I really think they are just a way for someone to either take a cheap shot at someone, or just say the most retarded inane things that no one really cares about. Admittedly some of my good friends are pretty good at saying stupid things that I actually find amusing in their status updates, but 90 percent of status updates are terrible. This is not new news. Everyone pretty much agrees that most status updates are complete bullshit. But I realized yesterday that when I text my friends, it's usually nothing more than a targeted status update. Granted some are useful, like "where are you?" "you want to get a drink after work?" but a lot of them are like "dude, there are a lot of hot chicks out on walnut st." or "not that hungover". I guess texting is just a way of sending a status update that won't seem that retarded to the person receiving it. Maybe I am wrong.

Linked-in, Facebook for dorks

I have always thought the social/business networking site Linked-in was like Facebook for dorks. Facebook is more like going out with friends; but friends you don't really want to go out with for more than ten minutes. I don't know of anyone that has really gotten a business connection or a job through a contact of theirs on Linked-in. I am willing to bet more people have actually gotten jobs through Facebook. Linked-in is like the awkward networking event where you don't really talk to anyone but you pretend to know everyone in your profession. The one thing that is cool about Linked-in though (albeit not that cool since Facebook does the same thing) is that it gives you your own personal 6-degrees of yourself, just like the 6-degrees of Kevin Bacon. It lets you know that someone is a 2nd degree connection if they are friends of a friend. If Linked-in could make a goofy app so that you could play six degrees of yourself and post it on your friends page it could make serious money. And who is using Linked-in Mobile? Why are you telling me you are on a business trip?

speaking of...

Kind of in the same vein as the checkbooks post earlier, I was thinking about things that have fallen to the wayside. Apparently nobody uses checks anymore. At least most retail businesses don't accept them. I verified this this morning with Henry, the barista at my Starbucks. He said they don't accept checks anymore. Anyway, having given up facebook I have a lot of free time on my hands. It gets me thinking about more and more random things and has overall been a pretty rewarding experience which I don't regret. Admittedly I have given in to other equally ridiculous hobbies, ie checking my match.com profile. Not something I am particularly proud of but not too embarrassed to admit. Match is like facebook minus the ridiculous status updates and dudes. There are a lot of ugly girls though, and I am ready to go cold turkey on that too.
Ok, getting back to the point of this post if it even has one. No one is reading anyway so it's okay for me to ramble. I was thinking about things no one uses anymore. Last week I thought about rejoining Friendster. Remember Friendster? It was like a baby facebook but not nearly as cool. Only losers joined it and you couldn't really do anything with it but accumulate friends and email them. A few days ago I actually went to the site and tried to sign in with my usual passwords and usernames. None worked and I didn't really feel like trying that hard to sign up and see what it was all about again. But the other thing I looked into was AOL instant messenger. Do people still use that? I signed on a few minutes ago and three loser friends were signed in. So I guess only a few losers still use instant messenger for all of you who were wondering. I won't say which friends were signed on to protect the guilty. (proof that only losers use aol.... look at that aol picture. first of all they are talking about threads, and is that guy in the picture the mask? you know, that movie with cher with the guy with big deformed head?)