In Search of the Facebook Killer!

Once upon a time I got tired of Facebook. I would log on into my account; find absolutely nothing to do, then log out. This would happen like 5 times a day, and I erroneously concluded that despite having 500 million addicts out there, Facebook had become boring.

With this mindset on, and brimming with optimism, I decided to hunt on the internet for another social networking site to waste away my days on: a Facebook killer!

I landed on MySpace, probably because it’s very popular in the US and it’s existed long before Facebook was launched. I loved it at first because it lived up to its name. I could personalize my page a lot and really turn it into…well…my space.

Then it started getting all boring and lonely out there because try as I could, I couldn’t locate any of my friends to connect with. Even sending invitations didn’t seem to help. It seemed nobody else wanted to jump ship like I did. So, I left.

Round about this time, I came across Perfspot. Now these guys seemed to address my problem beautifully. Although I couldn’t find any of my friends there, I could easily make a dozen new friends from all over the world! Flattering, indeed.
Until I discovered I had been a bit to hasty into calling these people friends. Before long, some of these ‘friends’ started displaying some very…um…questionable characteristics. Being your average conservative Zimbabwean, I couldn’t stomach some of the things they had started talking about. I wanted out.

Funny enough, Pefspot wouldn’t let me. It seems as if there is no way to deactivate a Perfspot account even after searching high and low on the internet for any answers. It seems they are so desperate for a high membership base that once they get you, they won’t let you go. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

I stumbled upon Mjoy: a mobile social networking platform originating from Germany. It also doubles up as a free texting service. I was pleasantly surprised to see an awful lot of Zimbos interacting on that platform: which helps to explain why the country’s relatively infant 3G network got congested pretty quickly.

The phone might be ugly, but the mjoy interface is nice!

Mjoy is a lot of fun…mostly because you get to txt for free to any number you like…and there aren’t a lot of things you get for free these days. Ok, there is a catch: you only txt if you have credits, and you accumulate credits by clicking through ads. Well, fair enough: as long as I don’t get to pay anything.

The problem with this site is that it is only accessible on your phone – you can’t access it from your PC. And I still don’t get why this site is overwhelmingly dominated by Nigerians. I don’t hate Nigerians, even if they are the ones who came up with the ‘African Movie’, but they do make posts in a funny, and sometimes hard to understand, type of English.

My social network search also allowed me a brief flirtation with Twitter. Twitter is very popular and I created an account with very high hopes - but it wasn’t that much fun. The whole concept of this site is to ‘follow’ certain people (get to see their Twitter updates) and to be followed by others. I couldn’t decide who to follow, and those I got to follow proved not to be all that engaging. I guess I like getting real information from my friends, and not ‘short bursts of inconsequential information’, which is what Twitter really means.

I think Twitter is for fanatics. I mean, who else would like to get trivial messages like ‘Getting out the house, hot day!’, ‘At work, boring’ or ‘Just had a hefty lunch’ on their account from anyone. I wouldn’t, even if it’s Justin Bieber I’m following. That’s just too much information.

Doubtless, I didn’t exhaust the social networking sites out there…actually, I think I didn’t even scratch the surface. But after having gotten around the world in search of the Facebook killer, I am back where I started: stuck with Facebook.

I still log on to the site, post something completely irrelevant, like a Douglas Adam quote for instance, and then log out….about 2 times a day. It does help to make the hours speed up to 5 o’clock.