Jason (my new boss, btw) went on a little rant yesterday about Facebook, the wall-garden effect, and the general overload of information coming from the social networking sites. This is something that I’ve been thinking about quite a bit lately: how do I manage all of these networks, and what benefit am I really getting out of them?

Since at this point I’m a member of too many networking sites to even begin listing (it’s a sick, sick addiction) I thought I’d talk a little bit about the few I use regularly, and what I use them for.

Facebook: I’ll talk about this one first, since it’s the one that’s giving Jason the most grief currently. I add everyone to Facebook as a friend (I’m not sure why I decided that was a good idea, but I did). It’s true that it can make it a tad overwhelming, but at the same time I enjoy seeing what people post, and I like getting a peek into everyone’s lives. Is that weird? The invitations and group invites are something I largely ignore, but only out of necessity - if I joined them all, it would be completely unusable. As for the email notifications, I have all of my Facebook items bypassing my inbox (they go under the *misc tag), and filtered as such it makes it easier for me to check periodically.

Facebook is only as daunting as you let it be. There’s a lot of information floating around, but with the correct filtering it can be useful.

MySpace: I only use this to keep in touch with friends back East, or from college. Most of my friends haven’t left MySpace - they use it because it’s all they know, and they have no reason to try something different. I don’t even use the email address I’m registered with there anymore, so I don’t worry about notifications. Honestly, I’m bitter that I still have to use that bloated, inflexible website ever again.

Twitter: I’ve fallen off the Twitter bandwagon a little. I still enjoy using the site, but I’ve noticed lately that it’s the same people posting the same links to their blogs all the time. Somewhere along the line it became a tool for bloggers to pimp their own stuff, and the fun interactions have decreased. I still love Twitter, and the Twitter guys are great, but I may need to re-evaluate who I’m following to bring back the interesting bits.

Pownce: I’m still excited over this one - I love that I can post links, files and events all in one place. But the best part is that now I can create sets of people that I can post for and monitor. There’s a lot of information, just like every other site, but now I can whittle down and choose what I want to view.

So anyway, I guess what I’m tying to say is that you have to choose which sites are valuable to you, and then find a good way of handling the torrent of information that is sent your way. Gmail filters are a godsend for me, because they keep the social networking spam out of my inbox and stored away for perusal at my convenience.

I agree with Jason that people are getting too “splintered” with social networking sites, and that’s why I’ve decided to make sure a couple of them are always up-to-date (Flickr and Last.fm are mainstays for me). I think everyone is still in the trial and error period - the best sites always float to the top, and that’s where people will stay.

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Tuesday night I was finally able to live out a dream of mine since I was 12 years old - I saw the Smashing Pumpkins live. For whatever reason, I always missed them when I was in high school (and before that, I was “too young” to go to concerts, according to my mother). When I heard that they were getting back together and playing no less than ten shows here in San Francisco, I immediately had Ryan buy us tickets for my birthday.

The show was good, albeit way too long (I never thought I’d say that an SP show could ever go too long). It was over 2 hours, and by the end I felt like my back was about to break, or my feet were about to disintegrate… whichever came first. They started off the set with some new tunes, and although I have Zeitgeist I’m not all that familiar with the new songs. Then they played a few surprises, like “The Aeroplane Flies High” (from the box set), “Drown” (another B-side), and “Bullet with Butterfly Wings.”

Jimmy Chamberlin stole the show towards the end with an amazing drum solo, and we got a peek into the personality of the new bassist, Ginger Reyes, when they skipped a song without telling her. She seemed very sweet, and joked about it with Billy on stage. OK, now I’m just getting too involved, sorry.

Billy was kind of down on San Francisco, saying that everyone he met was “mean.” Really? But I guess it gave him the inspiration to write a new song, called “Peace and Love and All That Other Shit,” which is the video I took that you see above. It’s sad that SF wasn’t his cup of tea (and too bad they’re playing so many shows here, I guess) but the song was one of the highlights of the evening for me.

I’m having trouble finding the setlist for the show, but I remember them also playing “Tonight, Tonight,” “Disarm” (one of my all-time favorites), “Tarantula,” “Doomsday Clock” and “United States.” A mix of old and new, but as Billy said at the opening of the show, “This is 2007, not 1992. Welcome to the new decade.” It would have been nice to see them back in the day, but it was still totally worth the sore feet.

See this review and others at PLAYBACK:stl

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First of all, it’s Monday and I’m not at work. That’s weird enough. And I guess I’m on vacation right now, which is also strange for me. Usually when I took time off from CNET, it meant I was going somewhere. Now I’m just… home.

So far today I’ve cleaned the bathroom, tidied up the bedroom, emptied the dishwasher, organized my Adium contacts, mailed off some bills, thought about travel plans to Santa Monica, thought about travel plans to Connecticut, and got a much-needed coffee.

I really dont know what to do with myself. I’m sure with more time I’ll be dangerously close to driving Ryan insane just by being here (he has his daily routine down to a science), so I need to figure out something for the week. My main plan is to hit the gym a bunch, maybe take some yoga classes, and go climbing more. Get myself out of the house as much as possible.

I also find it weird to not be tethered to Outlook all day. I’m so used to reminders, and my folders, and just the constant influx of corporate mail. It’s very disconcerting to only rely on gmail. I’m trying to decide if I should start using Mail.app for my mail, or if I should stick to the web interface. Now that I don’t have two computers to worry about, should I move all my web based stuff to apps, like my RSS?

/sigh
Relaxing is hard work.

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So much has happened in this past week alone, I don’t even know where to start! First of all, as I wrote on the CNET TV blog E3 was a huge letdown. I guess I wasn’t expecting too much, but still! Throw a girl a freakin’ bone, here. Wii Fit was probably the biggest news for me, but we don’t even have our Wii anymore. I guess I need to go back to the gym if I want to stay in shape! How boring.

Friday night, despite being exhausted (and having a long history of being a lameo that never leaves the house) I put on my weekend best (read: jeans other than the Levi’s I wear everyday) and headed over to the Pownce party! It was nice to get out and see everybody, and to fill in Kevin and Leah on my favorite parts about Pownce, as well as some features I’d like to see in the future. So far, I’m really loving the site.

Saturday I was a complete slug, but Sunday was the AIDS Walk! Team CNET Networks raised almost $20,000, and we had a great time walking! My feet and legs are paying for it today, but it was worth it. After the walk, I recorded TWiT #105 with Leo, Jason Calacanis (my soon-to-be boss) and David Spark. If I’m a little low energy on the show, it’s because I just walked over six miles! That’s a lot… for me.

On top of everything, I’m getting ready to shoot my final Prizefight tomorrow! It’s a big one, believe me. Right now it’s so long that I’m going to have to cut about 25% out of it before the shoot. But you know what happens when I cut stuff out? People get mad that I forgot something! You can’t win! Hah, well, no matter what I do, at least half of the people get mad, right?

More slugs found here.

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