What can I say? Blame Ian, I guess. He gave me an invitation to Y! 360. I even tried reading the help on the subject of Blogs. Here's what it said: "A blog is a great way to share your life and experiences with friends and family."

Now that raises two questions:
1. Is this what we've come to in the world?
2. Do I really want to?
3. Was that just something the poor person who had to write the help came up with? Hey! Give him/her the business plan, will ya? (Hey, I never said I could count)

Most of my friends and family are on the other side of the planet, but we've managed to keep in touch without a blog. Several times a week, actually. VoIP anyone?

Then you get to the problem of free speech. A public thing like a blog has nothing to do with free speech. It's all about marketing, image, and credibility. Let's just say I didn't expect to be able to do search in the newsgroups for my name in 2005 and be able to read something I posted in June 1992... The Internet back then wasn't quite what it is today and "privacy" wasn't a real concern. Having everything you say and do be available to the whole world to scrutinize used to be a concern for actors, singers, movie stars, politicians and the like. Today, the average Joe has to be careful what they say online. Who knows, next year when they are trying to apply for a new job, some wise crack they made 13 years ago online in a chat room might lose them the opportunity. Talk about image building. Maybe I'll setup a shop for online image consulting. That's sure to be a growing market.

But what about free speech then? Same for that. While I was trying to think of something "smart" to start my blog with, I realized that pretty much whatever I said that aimed to be funny, would end up upsetting this group or that. Let me put it this way as an example: 20 years ago calling someone an invalid/midget/[insert political party here] wouldn't be considered slander or get you sued.

"Social networking"? I don't think so. I mean this in a personal sense. In a business sense, sure. Creating a public image for yourself or your company, showing potential investors, business partners and/or clients your large amount of contacts, endorsements and giving a glimpse of you/your company probably works now, but for how long? I guess it depends on who is reading. TV has been around for a while now and most people still believe everything they see, even though every aspect of every show, ad and even news show has been carefully sculpted to sell but little more.

So next time we meet, don't ask me "What's up (doc)?" Try "How's your image doing?" and I'll answer "Check my blog comments".