A sucker for features

Yeah, so a few people have noticed that, despite my general disdain for "social networking" services as a whole, I finally got suckered in and signed up for both Twitter and Facebook.

I was a long-time user of Microsoft's MSN Messenger service. (I even had a "charter membership" to the Microsoft Network, for whatever that's worth. Remember when we didn't have "internet service providers", but signed on explicitly to companies' dial-up networks?) Anyway, eventually I got a job where their "standard" messenger client was AIM. I didn't want to have to run two distinct messenger clients because of the combined resource usage, so I looked for a client that would connect to both services in a single client. The one I selected was Trillian, which I installed and started to use.

When I got it up and running, I noticed there were little icons that lit up with each service to which it connected, and only two of its four lights were lit. I felt like I was missing something, because I was using a program but not all of its features. So I entered my credentials for my almost-forgotten ICQ account, and on came another light. What was the fourth one? Yahoo Messenger? I didn't know they had a client, and I certainly didn't know anyone on it. But I wanted that last light to light up. So I signed up for a Yahoo account, and finally my program was complete.

Now you might understand a bit what feelings went through my head when I heard about Microsoft's E3 press conference this week. Felicia Day (who has a very cute face, but dang that girl needs to eat before she blows away) announced that the Xbox 360 would be integrating with Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm this year.

New features? On my 360? And I don't have access to use them? Well, I'd better sign up, then!

Of course, I had to be a touch creative with my account names since I waited so long, but fortunately I was able to get away with just adding a "1" to my alias and calling it good. (Except for Facebook, which demands a real name. What do you mean, "Yakko" isn't a valid first name?)

I don't know if my Facebook page will see much action (we all know how infrequently I update my own blog as it is), but I've already found that Twitter is fairly useful for those really quick thoughts I think might be nice to jot down but don't think are worth a whole blog post. (So far, I've resisted the temptation to reply to the tweets of celebrities who will never know I exist, but we'll see if I can maintain that resolve.)

And after listening to the '80s Tag station on Last.fm most of the day yesterday, I already can't wait for this to be turned on in the 360.

They hyped up Netflix again, and I started to feel tempted again. That one, though, costs money, and signing up for another entertainment service right before medical bills start rolling in sounds like a really bad plan.…