Interesting thing happened last night. After a bit too much Buffalo Grove Zinfandel (2nd most popular wine at my local Wine & More for just $6.99/bottle!) and four straight episodes of The Office at hulu, I got a little bored. I’m new to my part of the world, so I thought I’d get on brightkite and see if any other techies were out and about nearby.

I put a message out there: “Anyone want to have a brew” It was only a few minutes before I got a reply, “At [local bar]. Come on by!”

Now, I happen to live in neighborhood where the gay fellas tend to gravitate towards. I had also been noticing that most of the people on brightkite in my area were men who were checking in with messages like, “at [home address]. Alone. ” I didn’t want to get myself into a sticky situation (I know what you’re thinking and you have a dirty mind), so I decided to investigate this guy a little. A quick look at his profile page showed me that he’s in Web development and marketing so I decided to go ahead and meet the guy. I still had this gut feeling that he might be looking for something other than a friendly conversation about social networking (god, am I naive or what?), but I remembered what Sir Richard Branson said in an interview with Arianna Huffington that I had watched earlier in the day, “I’m a great believer, in life,  in saying yes and not saying no… …and not holding back because of what other people might say.” Plus, the folks in the twitter-sphere (copyright me, just now!) were encouraging me to go (likely for their own amusement). So I marched.

While I walked over to the place where I was to meet the guy, I used brightkite’s mobile service to ask the guy who he was with. “Alone. Smoking… iPhone and ashtray on table.” I started to sweat. This is not looking good. But I couldn’t get Branson out of my head. And the guy was a fellow Internet marketer, I reasoned. “We’ll talk shop,” I messaged him. “What do you want to buy? Silly guy!” he messaged back. Oh boy.

As I walked past the guy, sitting at an outdoor table, staring at his iPhone and ashing his fag (what?), I felt bad. But there was no way I was going through with it. Later on, he messaged me, “Had my nite cap. Going home.” What a jerk I was. By that time I had wondered into a different bar, made a new friend named Hunter, and was recounting the entire episode to her to see what she made of it. Of course she thought it was the funniest thing in the world. And I had to work pretty hard to convince her that I wasn’t gay, or even curious.

So, the answer to the question, “Is BrightKite a gay hookup site?” It is if you live in a gayborhood. Or is it? Now the guy has messaged me, lol. just googled “talk shop” & thx to urban dictionary got what you meant. can’t help it – i’m foreign will have a beer some next time.”  What the hell to make of this all, I don’t know. How say you, netfreaks?

Facebook

Do you freak the twitter scene? I thought so. Some of us use it for fun. Others to promote a business or otherwise enrich our careers. Still, many of use it for both and for this [likely] majority of twitter’s user base, it can be difficult to address all of your followers and remain relevant to all of them.

Enter blellow. It’s a “productivity microblog for professionals.” It’s a good way to share and seek out tips, best practices, leads, advice, and other information with professionals in your line of business. You can join topical groups to discuss specific issues, which is nice. You get the picture.

My take is that blellow is cool, and could definitely be useful. I’ve already got some handy tips on getting acquainted with GIMP from the group dedicated to that piece of software.

Specialized microblogging platforms are the future, in my opinion. They will prove better tools to help us find relevant people with whom to connect. BUT, there is one piece of the puzzle missing before the use of multiple microblogging platforms becomes bearable. We need an app that can sign us into multiple platforms and allow us to monitor and interact with any platforms we belong to. It’s just way too much trouble to manage more than one microblog profile, if you ask me.

Your thoughts?

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