Ghost Towns and Migrations

I like to have the Planet Earth DVD's playing somewhere in the background while I work. I realized that it is both more interesting and less distracting than CNN, and it makes for an excellent compliment to loud music. The Emmy-winning series, narrated by David Attenborough and produced by Alastair Fothergill, is just like every other nature documentary you've likely seen--except for the fact that the videography is so visually stunning that it creates an epic sense of adventure out of ordinary elements in nature.

The transitions from one scene to another are dictated simply by the migrations of a certain breed of animal, or the changing of the seasons, or how the battles for territory and breeding rights of a certain species create a ripple effect in some faraway land. Because the BBC invested in a full-on next generation kit that would still be the envy of any indie production company twenty years from now, the story of Planet Earth just tells itself. The producers are afforded the luxury of stepping back (like, ten miles back) and letting the drama unfold in high definition.

It just so happens that the DVD was playing as I decided to clean up my Myspace page, and I began thinking about the migrations that we make online.

The only reason why I even returned to Myspace is because I heard that they had revamped their layout to look more like Facebook. So I logged in and, sure enough, I was pleased to see the toned down look and feel of the new site. But then I noticed how deplorably out of date my page was. I mean, a lot has happened since I was a regular visitor. Was it really time to revamp my delightfully irreverent and lo-fi Myspace presence to come up with something a little more....mature?

I was stumped, so I posted a couple comments and caught up with some friends who still aren't on Facebook--and thought I would leave it at that. Then it began to occur to me that several of my friends managed to maintain multiple pages at a time, and perhaps it would be a good idea to at least take down the animated gif's.

Well, I still haven't.

Instead, I decided to take a trip down memory lane and logged into my Friendster account (Surprise #1: I still remembered the password). The site loaded very quickly (Surprise #2) and looked nearly identical to ...::drum roll please::... that's right, Facebook (Surprise #3).

But unlike Myspace, Friendster was an utter ghost town. All of my friends' profiles were exactly as they had left them many months and years ago. In fact, I was surprised by some of the faces that appeared in my "Top Friends" list. Had I actually selected these people at one time in my life? Or did the webmasters simply need to select somebody to put in there when they created the feature? All I remember is that sometime prior to 2005, I decided that I had waited for my page to load for the last time. And, apparently, I never looked back.

I can see how there may be something like a seasonal migration from one social networking site to another, depending on which cutting edge features they can develop. Now that Facebook promises not to invade my privacy, I think I'll stick around for a while and see what develops. As for Myspace and Friendster, the quarries have gone dry. If I go back at all, it will be like a scientific expedition to Antarctica. Just passing through...

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Postscript: The Facebookification of other social networking sites raises another question: is it really wise for all of these heavily financed companies to look and feel the same? The story of nature dictates that too many species occupying the same space is typically a bad thing.