I joined Facebook!

Out of the blue I got another email inviting me to join another online social network. This time it was to join Facebook. Facebook has been around for a while, but it was elitist. You had to have a .edu email address to join in the beginning. I’m an alumnus of three different universities but I don’t have a .edu email address. Only American universities can use the .edu domain.

You must not need one anymore. They are trying to broaden their appeal. Facebook like MySpace very much targets the youth market, the real problem with Facebook is people graduate and perhaps move on to another online social network. That is their fear, losing their members. Now they are trying to market their site as being for multiple purposes, Facebook is not just for posting drunken frat party pictures.

MySpace can not handle 中文

I of course got invited by someone in China. MySpace China is under construction, but I saw a few profiles of Chinese people on MySpace last night. One huge weakness to MySpace is the site’s inability to handle foreign character sets such as Chinese and Japanese. You can use 漢字 in Facebook though.

I never had enthusiasm for Facebook

I don’t really plan on inviting anyone to join Facebook. I did enter my alumni email addresses which I never use, but was necessary to join university online communities. I didn’t even have an alumni email address from UVIC. I graduated in 2000 and I always used my computer science email address which was assigned to me when I was in first year: amckay@gulf.uvic.ca

I’ve registered an email forwarding address for UVIC and already had one for UBC. They are both muskie@…

Too many email addresses is inefficient

As part of the sign up process I had to check my Tsinghua email address. I had given up on that because it doesn’t work so well and frequently times out or crashes my mail client. I hadn’t checked it in months. I felt bad because I had one unanswered email. I answered it. I used to answer emails right away. I use to send a lot of emails whenever I had information I thought people would be interested in. After my MBA program I don’t answer emails so promptly and many may never be answered. People stopped answering my emails and apparently things will never be better. I don’t want to be part of something that will never be better.

Emails go unanswered

While going through my 100+ emails in my Tsinghua account I saw one where it is now official policy to send emails to the International MBA mailing lists in English or at least bilingually. Perhaps someone enrolled who doesn’t speak Chinese, or perhaps exchange students complained more vocally.

When I was at Tsinghua I was the only person who didn’t read and write Chinese really well who checked my account and I then posted on our Yahoo Group for international students when recruiters and guest speakers were coming. Jobs are sometimes posted but almost any job in China requires fluency in Chinese and they really want to hire a Chinese National. Besides teaching there aren’t too many good job opportunities in China for expats. I thought about teaching, but was talked out of it. But then I did end up teaching English in China.

Job Search Frustrations

After my MBA, I was unemployed for an extended period of time. I had an interview, which didn’t go horrible, for a good job at a good firm last week. But it appears I may not be called back for the next round. I really don’t like it when people just ignore you and pretend you don’t exist. Maybe that isn’t the case here, maybe the time line got screwed up, but for some HR departments I’ve definitely been less than satisfied with the experience, enough that I would stay away from that company and tell others to do so too. That eventually became the purpose of Glassdoor.

What is the ROI of Social Networking?

I can’t really say I’ve benefited too much from online social networking. I haven’t found a job through LinkedIn though almost despite my wishes I have over a hundred contacts. I got guilted into joining MySpace by bands I like and there are a lot of strange people on that site, stranger than me. I can see why parents worry about their kids using that site. It is a jungle. Facebook pretty much requires you to be 18 and is harder to join so there is presumably less riff raff. Vox hasn’t really lived up to Kevin Burton’s hype in my opinion. I haven’t even heard it mentioned of late.

MyBlogLog seems to be gaining some traction in the blogosphere but even though Chinese people are using it, the number of members was in the 10’s of thousands when Yahoo bought it. Maybe with the might of Yahoo behind it…

I still am not a member of Orkut. I hear that is where all the hot Brazilian women are. I still get a lot of strange keyword referrals and I definitely regret some things I’ve written at least in terms of detail, tone, and phrasing. And despite encouragement today from one of my former Sauder MBA classmates to keep blogging, I’m not sure how beneficial it has been for me.

Updating Old Blog Posts is Work

I’ve been going to through old blog postings for years, improving some, updating others with new information, I even deleted more than a few. I’m surprised I blogged about signing up for Facebook. As we start 2022, I realize once again that despite all my effort, there has been negligible ROI for me from social media and online social networking. If you have a success story to share you can leave it below, but I plan to blog mostly about hobbies and personal interests going forward, I think my website got too big and unfocussed, hence all the editing.

This entry was originaly posted on January 31st, 2007, it was last edited on January 5th, 2022 and is filed under: Technology and tagged: Facebook, Job Search, Online Social Networks.