Today's theme in the news (that I bothered to read about, that is to say: news excluding anything to do with the Middle East) seems to be focused on, well, lots of things. But I'm going to talk about the two scariest words any parent has ever heard: Social Networking.
Facebook has announced that it will begin selling gift cards at certain "targeted" shops for users to purchase their online games. I'm not really "up" on social gaming (I game like a true nerd, I buy them at a GameStop then get uppity about the used games market) but, do the people playing FarmVille even know they're playing a game? Isn't the biggest incentive to play the fact that their friends play, oh, and that it's free? The target demographic for these games seems to be mainly 14 year old girls, and yet Disney is buying out companies that specialize in this market to the tune of 563 million dollars. (Plus .4, as in 400,000 more.) Obviously the market is making money, I just have no idea how. It's most likely in advertising. If social gaming goes to a paid model, wouldn't that just encourage everyone to play the games where the companies spend millions of dollars in the production of them? If you're going to pay twenty bucks for something, why not go the extra mile and play a game that's actually a game. I thought the Sims was bad. All it did was make you live your life, or worse, someone else's life. In FarmVille they make you do chores. There's actually a game on facebook where you, I kid you not, work in a restaurant. Are you kidding me? Awesome. I'm back to high school, when I got minimum wage plus some tips to make sure the tables were cleaned up, only now it's digital, I'm not getting paid, and I'm choosing to do it. For fun. Whoever comes up with these games has a mean streak, or has a really odd understanding of the word "entertainment."
Continuing in that vein of thought, Apple announced that they are creating their own social network, Ping. But it's only for music! Isn't that what MySpace has turned into? (That and a really good way to get on "To Catch a Predator?") I think this is Steve Jobs idea of a zinger. Bill and his ilk recently came out with their own search engine, Bing, and Steve just told Microsoft to "suck it" with his billion-dollar "Geek is Chic" industry and rhyming competition. (By the way, I still have no idea what Bing actually is. After about a year of those creepy commercials that try to convince me that google, a website that literally consists of a single search bar, is too confusing to use. I'll just have to assume it's simply Microsoft's very own search engine, and continue to not use it.) The real kicker about Ping is this, the why? I already have facebook. All of my friend's have facebook. Sure, I suppose it would be nice to link into everyone's iTunes (a feature iTunes has had for over 5 years) but, if I really want to know what my friends are listening to, I'll just ask them. I don't need an entire new social outlet to steal me away from the Sun, again.
...but you can use it from your iPhone...and apparently it's only one click. No, no. I better not.
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