Biting it...

Well I did it. I finally got a facebook account, and ya know what.? I kinda like it. I don't have to worry about trying to make my page look cool, I just log on and talk to people. It's real simple.

I also got a new phone the other day. My phone went haywire when we were in Minnesota and considering we were still a week away from being done, I really needed a new one. I went to the store and looked at several and decided on a Samsung Alias. It flips open Sideways for a keyboard to text on, and then normal like a cell phone. Well I kept it for the rest of the tour and was just un-impressed overall. If I wanted to keep more than 50 text messages in my inbox I was going to have to buy more memory. Not what I expected from a $100 phone. So when I got back to Omaha I went and browsed Nebraska Furniture Mart. The one stop shop for the best prices on anything you could ever want to buy. They had the SAME phone and after the rebate it would have actually cost me negative one penny. They would pay me a penny to take the phone. Then I played with the LG Dare and was faced with a moral dilemma. I loved the Dare but it was more than the first phone cost and I know in a matter of months the price will be cut in half, and even more. So do I get a phone for free that was ok, but unimpressive or get a phone that I really really liked, but spend money on it just to watch the price go down in December. I called Mindy up to get her opinion and she was helpful. I walked away with the Dare, and so far I love it!!! It's pretty much an iphone and it's smaller so it fits in my pocket. I would suggest it to anyone who wants an iphone, but doesn't want to switch to AT&T.



Other than that, we're headed to Dallas next weekend for the Feedback Conference. That'll be fun. Next month we'll be venturing down into Alabama and Tennessee. It should be a good time.

I'll have a few more videos to post here pretty soon.

Spacebook?

Today I had some free time at work and decided to browse some of my friends myspace pages. I like doing this every so often so I know what to talk about the next time I see them in person. But instead of being greeted by all their latest news, my myspace friends served me only a sobering moment. Of the 30 or so friends whose accounts I browsed through, a good 70% haven't even logged into their myspace page for at least a month, some of them even longer. Have they all grown up and no longer feel the need to log in and update their profile? Am I a loser because I log into my account multiple times a day without fail to check for messages or comments? Or maybe it's something altogether different. Maybe they've simply migrated to the newer, trendier Facebook.

Recently, several of my friends have been hounding me to get a Facebook account, but even after I spent all last week on my couch, sick, with nothing to do, I couldn't bring myself to do it. As it is, I consistently log into 4 separate social networking accounts on a regular basis. My personal myspace page, the band's myspace page, the band's private myspace fan page, and the old band myspace page (Nobody seems capable of reading the notes I plastered on every inch of the page stating that the band's name has changed and "The Livingstons" no longer exist. I still get booking requests weekly, and though most are fruitless, I don't want to miss any opportunities.) This isn't even including the band's purevolume page, Bebo page, Oaktree page or any of the other 13 pages we've set up that I never log into. One more social networking site to log into just might drive me insane.

Let's say I do sign up for a Facebook account, what do I do next? Well I have to go out and find all my friends that I'm already friends with on myspace and add them to my Facebook account. Then I've got to pimp out a completely new profile (you do that on Facebook too don't you) so all my friends (or whatever they're called on Facebook) don't think I'm a nerd. Then I've got to upload all the same pictures that I uploaded on myspace and type a whole new description of the same me that has an account on myspace. Where does it end? Do I need to set up a Facebook for the band? A private facebook fan page? A Facebook page for "The Livingstons" just in case someone comes looking for the old band?

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy my friends and want to keep in touch with them, but how much time should in invest in maintaining the perfect online medium?

I suppose I should just accept the fact that myspace is slowly fading away considering I predicted it would happen in a blog a couple years ago (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=5689225, entited "What I Really Think of Myspace"). Never-the- less I didn't think it would just fade away to make room for another different, but basically the same social network.

So where do I go from here? Is knowing the latest, up to the second info on all my friends important enough to double my online social networking accountage and bow to the throne of mighty Facebook? When I think about it, the times I do eventually run across a long lost "friend," it's a really good feeling. I get to see their latest pictures, catch up on all I've missed out through the years, and shoot them an email telling them how much I've been thinking of them. But then, once that minute and a half has passed, I understand why it is we fell out of touch in the first place. I care about them, but not enough to maintain a chain of more than 2 or 3 emails a year.

For now, I vote "no" to Facebook. I've got nothing against it, but I've probably got better things to spend my time doing then chasing down a bunch of people just to fall out of touch with again once the new latest and greatest network appears. I can do that on myspace for the time being, at least until their "most recent log in" prove that they really are long and lost again.


On a different note, John and Anthony are blogging again. Check their stuff out while it lasts!