NowSourcing

The following diary is not for any particular day. Its just a summary of how many of my days went during my first year at college. This diary chronicles the addiction I like many of my collegiate brothers and sisters live with everyday, FACEBOOK. Millions of college students live with this addiction day to day, I being one of them.

(Image credit: eureekaswindow)

8:00 am
I wake up hit snooze on my alarm. 15 minutes later I pull myself out of bed and stumble over to my desk, open my mac book and open safari. Skip the news, go straight to Facebook. Who knows? In the past 6 hours that I was asleep someone may have written on my wall, tagged a photo of me, requested my friendship, or something juicy may have happened to one of my friends (news feed will be sure to tell me).

8:45 am

I have bathed, dressed, maybe eaten (depends on if I have any more Nutrigrain bars). But I am back on Facebook before I head off to class. Just in case someone had an eventful morning, I need to know.

9:00 am

I have walked up the hill to my first class. I’m waiting outside my classroom with my iPod playing and computer on my lap. Still clicking through mine and other’s profiles trying to catch a glimpse of what new could be going on in their lives. By this time what my news feed is showing is stuff I’ve already seen at least 3 times new relationships, new photos, wall post, same ole’ stuff. I move on to other websites to fill my time for the next 5 minutes until class starts.

1:30 pm

I am out of class and heading to grab some food - by now you get the point.

I am a student living with Facebook addiction. I have admitted I have on a problem and I am on the first step to recovery. But do I want to recover? Facebook has become a value tool in socializing now for many young people. It will never come close to the personal aspect of a face to face talk or for those who are living far away from you a telephone call, but it has made it extremely easy to keep up with them without actually keeping up with them.

I can see how my friends are doing by their status update, if a friend is currently listed a “never been happier” I can assume things or going well. If their status is something along the lines of “… is two steps away from giving up” I may want to give them a call. It’s like knowing exactly what mood your friend is even when you’re not around them.

Facebook also lets you keep up with people who you normally wouldn’t keep up with. Those acquaintances whom if you saw them on the street you would say hi but then have nothing to talk about. With Facebook you will have at least a slight idea of what’s going on in their lives just because of what has been in your mini feed concerning said person.

The world of dating has also been infiltrated by Facebook. You know your friend “Chris” is interested in a girl in his economics class and they have been on a few dates. Well they are not an official couple until its “Facebook official.” Facebook official is something reserved for only the most serious relationships you don’t list yourself as in a relationship with someone on Facebook unless you plan on (or at least are going to try to be) exclusively with the other person. Because once you are linked on Facebook it definitely is serious.

The Facebook addiction is more of an informational addiction its just that Facebook provides that information in an easy way. It keeps things organized and easy to find out. Also the communication aspect of it (wall posts and Facebook chat) gives people the impression of actual communication almost in the sense of actual face to face contact, because you Facebook profile is basically your Internet self.

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If you too got fed up with the whale carrying birds, then you must have turned you attention and free time to another micro-blogging platform. First came Jaiku, then Pownce, after which people started turning to Twitter. When the whale failed ashore, we turned our attention to Plurk. Not a new player has come into the scene by the name of Identi.ca.

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The Internet is a great medium for a number of different activities. You can get your news, conduct business, or stay in contact with friends and family. Two of the most popular uses in today’s society are music and social networking. There are a number of great websites that perform one or both of these tasks. The following websites are the ones that I believe, offer the most unique features, have the biggest audience, or mix both aspects together most effectively:

5. Myspace

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Myspace is more than just a place to upload photos, blog, or communicate. It has offered many musicians another way to reach their fans. Musicians can offer fans the opportunity to stream or downloads their music. Musicians and fans also get the chance to interact through comments, messages and bulletins. Many bands got their start on Myspace, the best example of that may be Panic at the Disco. Myspace is great because of the access fans get to their favorite bands. Getting a message from a band to let you know about an upcoming show or downloading a free single from an artist is reason enough to put up with the other hassles that come with Myspace. Myspace is a great place for up and coming bands because it is extremely easy to creature your own profile and post your music and get it out to the masses!

4. PureVolume

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PureVolume is similar to Myspace music pages but is different in the fact that the entire website is set up for artist to promote their bands. It music before anything else and it a great place to find new acts with minimal distractions. It charts the most popular artists and songs so users can know what’s been popular that day and maybe hear about the next big act. PureVolume also is not as cluttered with ads like most of the other websites on this list so it makes it much more aesthetically pleasing. PureVolume is an extremely easy website to navigate and use.

3. Pandora

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Many sites have been trying to make Internet radio the next big thing. However, the website that does it the best is Pandora. The best thing about Pandora is that it takes what you already like and finds similar acts. Users give songs a thumbs up or thumbs down rating, which is taken into account in future song selections. Pandora also offers users the ability to purchase the song they are listening to through Amazon.com or iTunes. Recently MSN radio has dropped support for Pandora and users have had to decide whether to continue using the service for free with advertisements or pay a fee and enjoy ad free usage. Either way it is still worth the price to enjoy music you already love and possibly find a new love.

2. iLike

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Facebook has taken over Myspace’s reign as social networking site of choice. However one thing that the new giant in networking was missing was a music component. Facebook signed up with iLike. iLike has made equaled Myspace in features and practicality. Like Myspace iLike displays artist info, allows user to stream or download songs, and gives fans the opportunity to connect with their favorite musicians, however iLike has one feature Myspace is missing, iLike is partnered with ticket master and allows users to directly buy tickets from iLike. iLike, even though it is extremely similar to Myspace music, is better because it offers all the same features as Myspace music but has a great feature in that it is linked to ticket master and has a larger audience because it is on Facebook.

1. Last.fm:

Last.fm is a great music social networking site because it truly brings music and socializing together. It helps you find friends based on musical tastes and helps you find new music through your friends. Its hard to tell whether its more of a website for socializing or a musical haven. A great indicator of compatibility between friends is music, so why not make it one of the first factors when meeting new people. Last.fm is the best because it makes music the first part of your social networking experience and can link people with similar tastes as well as help you find new acts.

Honorable Motion: Ruckus

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College kids love music and Ruckus is the only music social networking site that is focused just on one market, the college market. Ruckus is available free of charge to anyone with a valid college e-mail address. A fee of $8.99 is required for alumni and faculty to use the service. Ruckus’ musical catalog is available for any college student to download for free. There are some drawbacks to Ruckus: it is only offered in windows format so Mac and Linux users are left in the dark, also the songs downloaded cannot be burned onto discs or copied into another file or program (sorry iPod and other MP3 users), the Ruckus catalog is considerably smaller than other rivals such as iTunes and file names are inconsistently named, some are in all caps others use underscores for spaces. If you are in college and who mainly listens to music on their computer, Ruckus is the way to go. Ruckus fails to make the cut because it does not focus on networking which would be a great idea since so many college kids use it and because it is only available for windows users.

I am making a live appearance on Small Business Radio, the Internet radio broadcasting arm of Small Business Trends (you can follow them on Twitter as well).

The conversation will be around the business benefits of using Plurk, which would make for interesting discussion as it is such a fresh and new service.

So save the date - Tuesday, July 1st at 1:30pm EST to listen live. You can also get your Plurk questions addressed in advance of the show by leaving a comment on ask the guest.

As Friendfeed starts to get better and better, and people start to contribute more to the site, users will increasingly want to find ways to export that valuable data back to their own blogs.   After all, if you’re the webmaster of your own blog, your obvious first priority is to drive that traffic back to your own site.   More traffic equals more pageviews and more pageviews equals more Adsense clicks and more RSS subscribers.   So it makes sense that you would want that bustling Friendfeed activity to be moved over to your own domain.

Luckily a couple of Friendfeed users have been hard at work dealing with that very issue and if you have a blog hosted on either Blogger or Wordpress, then you are in luck.    The Blogger method is much easier as it is just a simple copy and paste.   The Wordpress method has a bit more to it.    But nevertheless, both methods have so far been receiving glowing reviews and I will shortly be installing the Wordpress version on my own blog to capture some of that Friendfeed magic for myself.

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