Those who know me know I am not a fan of facebook.  While the theory behind social networking sites is great, the potential for collaboration and connectedness to improve productivity seems obvious.  I find the practice to be quite the opposite, with a lot of time being wasted in gossip and social misery, while creating an illusion of being connected to a much larger social group, than in the real world.  The results often being a decrease in real world social connectedness.  Khalid Albaih’s cartoon above, sums things up nicely for me.

While I am seriously concerned at the closed and controlling nature of facebook, and see it as a force which is sucking the life out of the internet, I do recognize that there are those who succeed in making social networking work for themselves.  Velomobile.co.uk has therefore joined up.  We have both a facebook page and a Google Plus page.  Generally I think I like Google Plus better than facebook, it seems more open, less controlling and better structured, to avoid the socially damaging connections that seem to be part of regular facebook life.  There is still work to do on both pages, for now they act as pointers to this site so please feel free to like and link them as you please.