Surveying, Mapping and GIS

I have been getting thoroughly inundated in social networking... in the last week or two, I got Twitterized, LinkedIn and Facebooked.

Previously, I had played around with a few things, but other than my blog, nothing really seemed to have utility other than single-purpose content... and the social interaction was marginal, at best. As an example, Plaxo was useful to an extent, but I ended up dumping their Outlook software after it repeatedly created multiple folders and duplicate contacts on me. And then, they actually wanted to sell me the upgraded version that has the duplicate remover utility... BZZZT!! Not paying someone to solve a problem that they were responsible for creating.

At any rate, I can see how Facebook has really taken off - with their Facebook Platform, there is a lot of rich functionality that can be integrated, with AJAX-based Web 2.0 goodness. Thus far, I have found it leaps and bounds more advanced, capable and actually useful than any of the others, such as myspace - it goes beyond simple personal space to community and can genuinely form the glue toward holding an array of functionalities together in one dynamic space.

Still some limitations here and there, but ultimately, seeing things like tweet content being used to update status or being consumed from one framework to the next starting to emerge, they begin to get woven into a rich tapestry to keep friends, family, colleagues involved, interacting and so on, beyond the usual physical constraints of distance.