"Ambient awareness", or, I was just thinking that...

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Originally Posted by Disneyphile

I love my friends and all, but quite frankly, I don't care what they're doing every single minute of the day.

It's interesting to me that everyone has their own way to keep in touch. You enjoy livejournal, and I never could get into it. I glance at LJ once in a while, but my overall reaction is meh. I would never have the time to write that much about my life, I don't have time to read others' very long, personal posts, and to be honest, I don't want to reveal that much about my life online. Yet the short form that Twitter provides is a fun toy for me to experiment with how I express myself and I love the little windows I get into the other's lives. It really does feel like I'm always connected and can "socialize" when and wherever I want.

I wasn't around in the Usenet days so I can't speak for then, but message boards seemed to be a watershed in online socializing and remained the standard for a long time (in technology years, that is). The basic concept behind any social networking site is the same as it is here - be able to express yourself with your own handle, enabling people to get to know you. As Gn2 points out, we've always bled our conversations over from one reality to another...and now the rest of the world is catching up. I guess we just did it backwards...