tribe

I'm a non-monogomaus social networker, not as digitally promiscuous as some I do get around the web, and at the moment I ping pong between Facebook and Tribe. As easy as it is to compare and contrast all these networking tools; I've resisted, using the apples and oranges fall back that makes such conversations pointless. Still, every now and again I find myself defending the rise of the short post; you know the the tweet, the update, the less than 140 characters throw out to tell your network what's up with you.

Once and for all lengthy posts are not superior to updates. Not that I am one to produce lots of them, but short tweets from friends often tell me more than long ones. In fact it seems at times the longer the post the more impersonal. Shining the light on vocabulary rather than intimacy, many personal blogs I have read seem more a release for the poster than a real attempt at communicating. I'm ok with that but I do get my back up when someone tells me a long blog post is more worthy or interesting to read than a short update, as if somehow length insured depth.

I don't have an English Lit degree, so for me switching a Facebook status to it's complicated tells me a lot more about what's going on with a person than a post full of latinate poetry or a lengthy monologue philosophizing about the challenges of love. This is not devaluing the worth of poetry, prose or any one particular writing style, but simply a comment on what I as a person understand. For this I am grateful there are many types of communication tools out there.