This is off the topic of Google Tuesdays, but I can’t help but answer this question that Scoble asked on his blog (Everyone I know calls him Scoble, whether they actually know him or not. Not Bob, or Robert. Scoble. I hope that’s cool with him.)
Okay, getting to the question. Scoble asked “What about you? What’s keeping you from joining in on these services? Do you see any business uses? (I do, will try to write up my thoughts on those).”.
My answer was way too long for a comment, so I’m going to answer here and send him a trackback instead of prattling on and on in his space.
This is what I said before I edited my comment:
Ok, since you asked… I’m on Twitter, and Kyte a lot. I’m barely on Facebook and Jaiku. I’m not on Plaxo at all. LinkedIn I dig.
The thing that was keeping me from being on Facebook more was that, I really didnt get it. In fact until you explained it just now, I wasnt really sure what the point was for me – I could see why other people were crazy about it, and I thought it would be super cool to write about, but the reason to join the craze escaped me, until you mentioned one page aggregation of all my other web-craze-type apps.
On Jaiku I built a page but it seemed to be Twitter again, and I usually just pick the best of the similiar services and stick to it. I never got into Plaxo, didn’t find it appealing. But LinkedIn is saving my butt right now, after being off the radar for almost 9 months, my contacts through there are helping me get back in the spotlight. It was that Gmail import thing that gave me a chance to contact people I knew who were already on it, without violating their privacy. That, and LinkedIn Answers. Couple of best anwers and they crowned me an expert. Nothing I didn’t already know, lol, but it helps a lot.
His post has so much resonance with me, because he started off by saying he’d been “bitten by the Facebook/Twitter/Kyte/Jaiku bug”. And I totally have too.
In telling you why, I’m not going to talk too much about what each thing is and what it does – we’ll go deeper into that on Traffic Thursdays. Around then I’ll also talk about the business application of these tools. I will start off by laying blame though.
Hey, you’re not really addicted to something if you can’t blame other people for it. 
Part of why I’m addicted is my good friend Rummy’s fault – who got front-page Dugg Digged (sounds better in my head). For what? His kick-ass FaceReviews blog, which reviews Facebook applications.
Partial fault goes to the fact that tools like Twitter is just fun. It’s basically a page that you can post short updates to, and get updates from your friends on.
I like to be able to say what I’m up to, and to see what other people are up to, and connect on that basis. I also like knowing when someone is right there – if they had a “Tweet” three minutes ago, chances are I can get them on their phone, blog or Skype.
Kyte is also amazing, it’s essentially a portable, shareable multimedia channel. Not just video, but audio, text, slideshows, with the ability to embed links and get trackback from the master page.
I first heard about it when Scoble had that interview with Loic that I posted, then I went and built my own channel. I loved it so much that I added it to every page. But it dragged the page load time down and I still have a substantial dial-up and overseas audience, so now it’s only on the video page (and republished on the front page when next I update it).
I may add it back in and say, screw it. Splashcast is a lot like Kyte, I heard about it first, and it’s much prettier, but there’s something irresistable about Kyte that I can’t put my finger on.
Knowing there are live people in my room? Seeing the trackback list grow, even when it’s from my page? I don’t know. But this is one case where I would use both. When my video channel really starts to crank I’ll probably syndicate it every where possible.
I like to think it’s for the same reason that I don’t presently do much with my Jaiku page. Having limited time online each day, rather than being able to skate around at my leisure has taught me to be more efficient with my time, in the same way having only 140 characters to express myself on Twitter has made me more efficient with my words when necessary.
Speaking of word and time inefficiency, I really could talk about this all day, so I’m going to take a nap, and then get back to hooking you up with that Google master page we talked about. Why didn’t I just grab the list of blogs and leave it at that?
1- You could get that from Google.
2- I just hugss y’all to pieces, that’s why.
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