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Armand asks what my five favourite social media are. My five favourite social media are:

Bloglines. Before Bloglines (or your RSS-bucket of choice) came along, clicking through to sites I liked was an experience accompanied by a delightful, tingling sense of anticipation, like a miniature Christmas morning where you’ve been very good and not felt, rattled or peeked at any of your presents. Now, thanks to Bloglines, I can keep track of tens, hundreds of sites without ever being surprised. “Hey, I wonder if there’s anything new on-” No. No, there isn’t.

Stop tagging things, for god’s sake. Some things don’t need to be tagged.

I haven’t been using it that long, but I think I’d liken the experience to being at a party where you can choose, based on the most up to date information possible, who to talk to at any moment in time. It’s clearly a desirable thing that solves common problems and frustrations. And yet, something’s just not the same. Without those awkward minutes of standing by a wall when nobody’s talking to you, or being blethered at for two hours by a stockbroker from Penge who wants to tell you about his dachshund’s irritable bowel syndrome, it’s not really a party. It’s more like a careers fair for thoughts. Still, Bloglines, invaluable.

WordPress. Possibly the most significant development in communication since the mouth. Well, my communication, anyway. My mouth, as well.

del.icio.us and something else. Don’t know what the something else is (this?). But I use del.icio.us to make the side whatsit on this blog work, and something else to privately bookmark other things. Furl. Something. But that’s more antisocial media, really. I think people often underestimate the extent to which it’s vitally important for the success of social media that lots of media remain unsociable, introverted and grumpy. Stop tagging things, for god’s sake. Some things don’t need to be tagged.

LiveJournal. I don’t use LiveJournal. But I like the pictures.

Shouting. Is great. Is shouting a social medium? Hmmm. Tagshouting. That’s my new idea. Next time you walk down the street, tag things as you walk past at the top of your voice. “TREE!” “POSTMAN!” “BLUE!” “OLDWOMANVOMITING!” If everybody does Tagshouting, it will be very very social.

And those are the five social media I couldn’t live without.