Social networking is the fad of the century, apparently. I partake in it to some degree.

Although I resisted for a while, a friend and colleague finally made me create a profile at Xing. Alas, it was less helpful than expected when I tried to leave the job I had then. Still serves to present my extended professional information to anyone who is interested, but I rarely use Xing's other features. (Update: I learned that in between Xing shows only a very small part of the user's profile if you are not logged in as a member. Still better than LinkedIn, which shows nothing in that case.)

For a while I used Facebook, but more and more I found the changes to the -- already too complicated when I started -- privacy setting tools and concepts really annoying. I am convinced they are designed to confuse the users and make them finally give in to Zuckerberg's "post-privacy" ideas. I am still undecided if I should find these ideas just immature or outright dangerous. (I have been leaning more to dangerous lately.) Anyway, I stopped using Facebook. Twice.

Despite there being a certain segment of former colleagues on LinkedIn with whom I wanted to stay connected, I deleted my account there after the news of the acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft. (Update: I have created a token account there again, but only to be able to see others' profiles. I have nothing there myself besides a photo and the current occupation, and no contacts.)

When I write something of maybe a little more than ephemeral value, it goes to a blog at Dreamwidth. This is a rather unsorted collection of technical stuff (some bits about IPv6 at home when I had it new, for instance), books I have read, cooking stuff, and things. That blog has been dormant for a while, though.

Then came Google+, just like Facebook, but not Facebook. To do them justice, they had learned from the experience of other projects, including Facebook, and made a few things better. My presence there was mostly dormant during the last years before Google+ was closed.

With Twitter I had a kind of on-again, off-again affair. Last it was "on again" for a number of years, but in the light of the new owner acting out his fantasies of what he alone wants Twitter to be, I decided to leave.

Instead I am somewhat active on Mastodon/Fediverse now. I am @jyrgenn@mas.to there. While appearing similar to Twitter, the Fediverse, being a federation of many independent instances, is rather different. I am curious to see how that turns out.