Social Networking Clutter

I'm a big fan of many of the social networking sites out there today. I have a presence on Myspace, Twitter, Facebook and many more. A lot of people complain about Myspace saying that the user interface is not as pretty or "Web 2.0" as the others. However if you're involved in the independent music scene (either as an artist or promoter), having a Myspace page is a necessity. I established a presence on Facebook a while back and have slowly been building my network of friends and contacts. One thing that bothers me about Facebook is the increasing and overwhelming number of application plug-ins that keep being created. Lately almost every interaction with people requires me to "join" some new application.

I've been to Facebook pages where the owner has added what surely seems to be every single "latest and greatest" plug-in. In the beginning they had a relatively short profile page. Now I have to scroll down through an endless stream of widgets, lists, plants, drinks, stuffed animals, etc. Some are so packed with this stuff that I am starting to miss the old days of static HTML pages for websites.

The result of all this Facebook clutter has forced me to reject or ignore a lot of those requests, even from those who I consider close and special friends. Call me an old fart, but I still think using plain old messages and those features that are part of the core Facebook profile works just fine for me.