Instant Messenger, E-Mail, and Social Networks

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Do you guys use these things much? How much personal e-mail (i.e., not spam, automated bill reminders, mailing list messages, etc.—only personal communiqués between individuals) do you get? How many friends do you have on the instant messaging services you use? How many friends do you have on the social networking websites you use (e.g., Facebook and MySpace)?

On AIM, I have a few people I chat with every once in a while, and I receive only the occasional personal e-mail (maybe on average one or two a month). My social network online contain family members, a few people I know from online, and women I'm trying/tried to get to know to ask out on a date (and will probably eventually delete if nothing happens).

I also have a cell phone and mostly use it to talk to members of my family and to take care of personal business (e.g., to schedule a doctor's appointment). I usually don't even use half of the minutes allocated on my plan, and I have the lowest minute plan (most of my family uses the same cell phone company, which does mean those minutes don't count).

I oftentimes come home and would enjoy talking to someone but have no one to talk to. I mean, yes, there are other things I could do, but it's really not quite the same (having Asperger's syndrome doesn't necessarily make one asocial; it just makes one less socially skilled).

I don't use messenger that much anymore but I do use facebook and myspace quite often. I also prefer email over messenger.

I used to, a lot.
Now I pretty much do nothing.
I sort of miss it though, but I wish it turned out better in the end for once ya know?

I talk to a few people over messenger but only people that I know online. I have about 5 friends on Bebo (only from online) and only family members on myspace. I never get personal emails.

My cell, only really use it to call family. And i too suffer from never using my minutes. I have used it on a few occasion to send pic's and stuff i had on it to coworkers when they asked me to. It doubles as my MP3 player so i use it for that.

Social Networking Sites. Only on one and really only started using it because people told me i never ok'ed their friendship requests. Almost all my "friends" ( more like acquaintances) are coworkers or people i went to school with.

AIM, used it a lot more when I didn't live at home. Now I Mainly use it to talk with sis.

I don't trust sites like bebo and myspace with my personal details. Maybe I'm paranoid but I just don't want to give all my personal information to some website which might give/sell those details to spammers/government/thought police/the highest bidder.

There's one chick I've been talking to on ICQ but her ICQ got hacked by some morons so now she wants me to open an account on AIM or Yahoo IM although I've tried to explain to her that it is not the messenger program which is at fault but her choice of easily guessable password!

Apart from that nope.

I use AIM a lot. It's my biggest social networking tool that I use on the Internet. I don't have that many people I talk to (just five) but I talk to them a lot. My Livejournal is the second biggest. I basically use my email for school and to find out when people have left me comments on my LJ. I very rarely get personal emails.

I recently made a Facebook for university, and that's mainly what I use it for. My cell phone doesn't get nearly the traffic that other people seem to, but I occasionally get text messages. I usually only talk to my parents on my cell phone.

To those people who never receive personal emails: to you send personal emails? One can't sit and wait for their inbox to ping if they never send any emails.

I'm considering deleting my Facebook. It reinforces the thought pattern that people don't care, such as when you update your "status" — this is like walking into a room full of your friends and saying "this is how I feel, this is what's going on in my life" and being rewarded with silence. I would much prefer to write a personalised email to someone telling them things of any importance, as the recipient then feels cherished and will likely reply. Facebook feels like sitting on a corner with a bunch of signs displaying information about yourself, and waiting for someone to stop and take notice. Of course, no one does.

Email: I receive one or two personal emails a week. Some are continuations of listserv discussions. Others are from my mom, my mother in law, my stepmother in law, or my sister on the rare occasion.

Instant Messenger: I used Yahoo! to talk to my husband while he's at work. I use MSN to talk to my mom at times, but mostly linking her to a new house I've discovered and thought she'd like to buy (she's getting ready to buy a house). AIM, I use to talk to one or two online friends, but honestly, it's just there for show. And ICQ gets no activity. (Don't worry, I use Pidgin so I'm not getting all that bogging down programmed apps that these companies seem to think is a good idea.)

Facebook: I have some people from this playgroup that we try to attend, but sadly neither I or my kiddos really fit into. I have a crap load of people from high school, which I send a lot of flair to and so they send stuff back. There are a couple of those from high school that frequently comment on my status updates. And since I'm terrible about going to the actual site, I installed Flock so I can update it in browser. And then I have some online and college friends. The same online friends are the ones I have on AIM. The college friends usually don't say a whole lot.

Oh, and my husband and I don't have enough real life friends that talk to us regularly to have cell phones. The only time they'd come in useful is to call and say we got held up in traffic during one of our many appointments during the week (OT, ST, therapy, so on). Our home phone has free long distance, so we wouldn't even be saving on calls to our parents or siblings (well, one of mine and one of his siblings are currently overseas). And the boys are still way to young or not at the cognitive level to use a cell phone.

I get no personal emails. When I get one, it is quite out of the ordinary. I got 2 personal mails so far in this year.

I have ICQ, MSN, but I dislike it and do not use it.

I use no blog or anything like that.

I have a mobile phone, but use it only for my job. I occasionally get SMS from a friend if they're meeting me and running late.

All my friends use their mobile phones daily, all except one use emails and instant messenger to converse with their friends (except me, since I do not answer any of these), also daily.

I only have an interest in face-to-face interaction.

If this is impossible, which it is with a friend, then I have an extremely hard time to keep up, write messages and such to stay in contact. I may just not contact that person for several months.

Personal email: From a few to several per week, mostly between self & either family (my aunt and my ex) or my counselor-and private messages via dx forum with "friend" I only know from online.
Don't use IM-ing at all, can't stand the idea (plus my dial-up prevents such a thing working at proper speed).
Don't use social networking sites-unless you count dx forum as such. Recently put profile on couple dating sites, but nothing has worked out from that, either.
Phone (don't have cell, only a landline): Some days, nothing. Other days, 1 or 2 phone calls (from same people I mentioned exchanging email with).

Yeah, me too. I want to find people I'd get along with in real (offline, face-to-face) life. Am impeded in doing so by how aversive it is for me to meet strangers in first place-which is necessary in order to filter out & select the few folks with compatible personalities to mine.

ditto

I prefer e-mail over IM or social networking. I have a MySpace, but don't go on there that often.

IM: I use that a lot!

E-mail: I only email my dad and my teacher.

Social Networking Sites: I have a lot of those, but I don't go there that often.

E-mail

I use my Yahoo e-mail for contacting people I have met over the Internet and my Virgin Broadband (my ISP) e-mail for contacting people locally (people from church, Asperger group, family, basically any circles of contacts locally and anything official and formal). I keep the local and non-local (Virgin and Yahoo respectively) quite separate.

Via my Yahoo mail I correspond with a girl, located in San Antonio. I do have other contacts I met on the Internet, though others I have e-mailed haven't replied or won't reply, even if they might chat with me via for example:

IM

I use both Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger. They have 20-30 people each but almost none are ever on. Really, nowadays, it's only down to probably one person on MSN and two on Yahoo that I have any contact with. It just goes to show that making friends online is a very short phase for most people, and unless they are extremely lonely they do not need the Internet to have positive interaction unless they are using:

Social networking sites

People do interact online as much as they always did but nowadays it's confined on sites like Myspace and Facebook. Not random people from elsewhere in the world or even outside their local area, unless they feel extremely ostracised, their contacts tend to be people from their school, work or whatever. Scotland is a country where Bebo is the most popular social networking site.

I, however, feel uncomfortable on these sites and don't use them. I know you can set your profile as private. But if I had a number of contacts on these sites, I'd still feel wide open and wouldn't have the privacy I need. I really only feel comfortable with one-on-one interactions such as on e-mail, IM, phone. Not on Myspace or Facebook or Bebo where there would be an audience.

But generally, I will always talk to local people via the conventional methods of phone, or mobile phone. Or e-mail.

Don't really use e-mail that much for conversations. Neither do many other people, I've heard that it's gone down in popularity, and people only use it for activation emails and such. Same here.

I use mainly MSN Messenger (Windows Live).

For a social networking site, I don't really care for MySpace or Facebook. I stick with Last.fm. Here's my profile, it's a pretty neat site.