I joined MyBlogLog awhile ago. I’m feeling frustrated with it. Not because it’s hard to use but three things bother me in general use. One is the friend thing. Another is having to click so many times before I actually get outside of MyBlogLog and land on the site I actually wanted to see, a few clicks ago. The third is the level of splogs versus sites with content. But, that is all over the Internet it just bugs me more when I’m part of a community where I kind of expect to find real people, not advertising.

The thing about friends was what started me writing this blabber today. Everyone on that network seems to assume that any contact at all is worthy of instant friendship. That bugs me. I am choosy about who I bookmark and who I mark as a site I like. I don’t like feeling I have to add every blogger who clicks my blog. It is expected there. People post to your profile and say something nice and request to be made a friend. They don’t even know my name. In a few cases I noticed that they had not even bothered to actually go to my site. They didn’t care, they just wanted to pimp their splogs. It’s aggravating and that’s why I joined BlogCatalog and BlogWoods, cause I hoped they would be different.

The other annoying thing which is the same for all three of those sites is clickage. If you see someone has visited your blog and want to return the visit it takes a minimum of four clicks to actually get to their blog. It’s not that my finger is wearing out, just that I don’t see the need for it. I guess it gives extra hits to their Adsense meters. But, it just gives me that waiting for an elevator or a bus feeling, you know what I mean. It’s great to have the journey but some journeys just make you wish Scotty could beam you up already and get on with it.

Anyway, as a social thing I like these networks. However, MyBlogLog is too much of a splogfest. I’m more interested in BlogWoods and BlogCatalog now. Though they are clones at least Yahoo didn’t buy them so they have hope of not being clogged by junk, at least not right away. It all depends on the people who use it really. So, sploggers, stick with the Yahoo bunch and leave us the little networks to be social and friendly, in a real, sincere way, not because we feel we have to.

Tags: friend, friendship, social networks, communities, community