ShareThisJust when I think I'm out, the Internet pulls me back in.In addition to acting as a clearinghouse for celebrity gossip, celebrity photos or celebrity-photographer gossip, the Internet has offered a revolution in social networking. Dozens of sites allow you to join, create a profile and link yourself to friends and acquaintances to stay connected, meet new people and share celebrity gossip.These sites typically spike in popularity for a few years, gaining millions of people and profiles, before losing share to a newer and more popular site. New profiles are created, new pictures added and new links are connected between individual members. The old site remains, filled with abandoned, unvisited profiles and years-old comments. An occasional pop-up ad surfaces like digital tumbleweed.If there are two specific activities that will define my generation, they will include the afternoon spent loading an entire CD collection onto an iPod and the two hours spent every three or four years loading a new profile into a new social-networking Web site. These may not sound like much, especially compared with, oh, mind-expanding drug use and non-violent campus protest, but such activities are era-defining nonetheless.Every four years or so I'm clued in to the newest social network, invited by friends who have long since jumped ship. And every four years or so I resist. Apparently, I would be the guy who skipped Woodstock to stay home and mow the lawn. As it is, by the time I give in and create a profile the rest of the Internet is on to the next big thing.First there was Friendster. Friends from high school were leading their college lives and gathering online to share photos and comments. It kept them in touch and saved them the seeming chore of a dozen weekly e-mails. I missed out until after graduation.Next came MySpace, which had a reputation for younger members, but was evolving to absorb all social networkers regardless of age, education and ability to type in coherent sentences. MySpace filled out with friends leaving college and finding the real world, which likely explains the regression and latent desire for middle-school sentence structure.After dragging my feet for a year, I finally switched to MySpace. No sooner had I done so before Facebook evolved from a college-only network to include graduates as well. Friends were announcing engagements on their networks and posting wedding photos on their profiles. And I was beginning to notice a pattern.By being consistently late to each advancement in the social-network game, I got to see how each site developed a demographic. All my Friendster friends were in college. All my MySpace friends were finding first jobs. All my Facebook friends are getting married. And this can mean only one thing.The lucky programmer who designs the first social-networking site for babies is going to have a gold mine on her hands.In four years' time, I'll be creating a new profile on a new site populated with parents. (Note to current Mother and future Mother-In-Law: Estimated figure, not an actual and/or contractual timeframe.) It's only a matter of who sets it up and how well it's advertised.If you build it, they will come. And if you advertise, a few celebrity babies couldn't hurt.(Ben Grabow writes for the young, the urban and the easily amused. Contact him at thinlyread(at)gmail.com.)
The Internet keeps pulling me back in
Paying taxes unites us. It also divides us. People can pay five and even six times more in state and local taxes than other folks in similar circumstances making similar incomes.
Who's got your number?
In one of the fastest-growing forms of identity theft, crooks are stealing tax refunds by swiping personal information and using it to trick the Internal Revenue Service.
