Andy Laub

I briefly mentioned before my general displeasure with MySpace in spite of its underlying usefulness. I was hesitant to just delete my page because it was still somewhat useful if I was looking for somebody or vice versa. But recently I succumbed to another temptation that allowed me to put the final nail in the MySpace coffin: Facebook.

Right now Facebook doesn’t seem to be quite as widespread within the general populace as Myspace, or at least their circles don’t overlap completely. That said, Facebook wins out for me for a few reasons:

• Most people use real names, and real photos
• Widget-oriented customization means you can have all sorts of junk on your page but it still doesn’t end up being completely ugly
• A lot of functions are handled with AJAX, so like Flickr, you’re jumping around a lot less, which in turn feels faster.
• Seriously, not ugly.
• I have yet to see spam.

On a related note, those in the Wausau area may have noticed the recent shuttering of WausauBlog, something that struck me as rather depressing. It’s fortunate then, that I’ve gotten together with somebody interested in “continuing the legacy” and so we’ve started to work on a spiritual successor to WausauBlog. We’re calling it Citizen Wausau, and while there will be similar content (it will have some of the same contributors), we’re hoping to work in some new features as well.

I think something snapped in me when I started to collaborate on Citizen Wausau. Part of it was a desire to collaborate on more projects with more people, and part of it was being able to work on a project that I was excited about. With that said, I am now officially for hire. Please keep me in mind of you know of anyone who needs a website, or if you want to work together. For now I’m still working at Digital Dialogue, and I’m sure I’ll continue to work with them, just not necessarily for them.