That's the thing - this is entirely stripped down, no apps or cutesyness (I'm in total agreement, btw)

I have a few friends who use it and have it echoed to their LJ so I see it.

I have yet to see a single Twitter post where I've said "wow, glad to know that."

But then I don't have any desire for people to know what I am doing at every given moment. Nor do I have an active spontaneous social life that would need to be updated on the fly. When I go out for dinner with friends I am not hoping that others will find out and tag along.

The site is blocked from work so no work value there (though I'm constantly on the work filtered IM so they have constant immediate access anyway).

But then I've never even been to the Facebook web site so I am definitely now in the "too old" school of internet users. Left in a corner mumbling that things were better with telnet, DOS command lines, and gopher was the pinnacle of networking on the internet.

It feels a bit like stalking, or reading a laundry list journal where the person only writes:

7:00 a.m. I woke up.

7:30 a.m. I am finished getting dressed and now I am eating a bagel.

9:00 a.m. Back at the office. Bah. Traffic was horrible.

I too don't have a desire for people to know what I'm up to every hour of the day; I'm sure it would bore. And I lack the desire to know what you're all up to every hour of the day. I suppose it could replace the postcard if one is away on vacation. I keep waiting for the day when most people use Evite for wedding invitations to save some money.

But some use Twitter to post humorous 1-line observations, and they can be playful and fun. I don't much like the idea that a friendship between two people can be reduced to 1 sentence. And why bother when you can come to the LoT to carry on an actual conversation, or read a thoughtful blog post with the ability to respond, as if there was a pony express dialog taking place (albeit in "public").

MySpace has become a place I go to find new music.

Facebook is something I mostly use for work, though I am having more fun playing around with it than I thought, and long lost acquaintances who didn't find me through MySpace and Friendster have contacted me on Facebook. Mostly it feels like yet another place where everything seems to happen at once but nothing is really happening at all. I do enjoy Text Twirl and Scrabulous, though. Some of the game apps are amusing.

There was a long article in USA Today about electronic wedding invitations. It was the weekend edition out when we were at Kings Canyon (someone left that section in the snack bar and I read it when I was eating breakfast Saturday morning).

Apparently Evite is considered kind of crude for it but there are several "classier" services available. Experts were split on whether this marked the end of civilized society or not.

Don't really know what it means but Wil Wheaton (of Star Trek fame) posted this on his blog today:

Yeah, I don't agree with CP that it's on the way up. I think it was trying to be on the way up, and might've been interesting (if you were a jetsetter or, like mp, went to concerts all the time, etc.) but like Friendster, it doesn't have the technology to keep up with itself.

Maybe I am showing my age and curmudgeonliness, but what is the point for a boring old guy like me? I am really not interested in knowing where all of my friends are at every minute of every day. And I guarantee that my life is nowhere near interesting enough for someone to want to know what I am doing right now.

What am I missing?

I am mostly interested in the tweets done by people on the move - Pop Candy Blogger Whitney Mathison tweets while she is at conventions, etc, so she can say "just bumped into this famous celebrity and they said this interesting thing." Otherwise I am not that interested in it.

Oy vey. And hah!

If it saves money to print up a save the date card for people's fridges (if civilized people insist on having something in print) and have the bulk of the info and responses online, I say more money for vacations, etc.

Granted, I don't want to get married, so maybe I'm not the best judge.

I think wedding invitations of the future should just go on people's calendars automatically.

And before you plan the date you can use the software to scan the calendars of your guest list to find the date most people [who you want to attend] are free. You could also set it to find the dates that the people you don't want there but have to invite are busy.