1) Oh boy Denny, I'm all ready to cut and paste your questions and then go hog wild typing an essay for each of them. I have got to wrap some stuff up at work first, but I really like your questions, I think you'll get some good insight from the kind folks of Humzoo. ;-)

2) Sweet, good to hear! I love discussions like this. Dave and I have them daily almost but I thought it would be more fun to ask other people. Plus Dave's stock answer for everything is "No!".

3) I'll try to be succinct.

1) I don't look up anybody. If I don't already know where to find someone, I probably don't care.

2) The friends thing is crap; it's so junior high.

3) Also crap.

4) I have a different place I go for privacy. Mostly, it's not important to me.

5) If I wanted to completely redesign my own website, I wouldn't be on Humzoo.

6) Yes.

7) eBay is evil.

8) I know what they are, and I don't use them. Tried 'em. Don't care for 'em.

9) Yes and yes.

10) I prefer slightly better quality than speed.

4) 1) Never used any of them. Humzoo is as close as I have gotten to anything like this. I'm with Courtney--if I wanted to keep connected, I would have but I know of people who find each other after years of losing touch so I guess it might work for some. I am happy with the people I have in my life that I've kept over the years (and moves). And of course meeting new folks here at Humzoo.

2) NA

3) I'm twittering? Is that good? I don't know the web community lingo and jargon. Most of that stuff is AOL-ish to me now and I feel intruded upon by people connecting with me too intensely. Maybe I've outgrown it or just stopped wanting it. I spend enough time on IM and email at work that I don't want a lot of that at home.

4) I'm a very private person--I think most people who know me would agree. I'm very careful in any area with my address and phone # and email address. I can see it being important to people if it is a work address but it isn't and there are just too many weird people out there that I don't want to give more data than they already have. I don't mind my site being open--but I'm only so personal about myself on it (as may be obvious)

5) I'm happy with what I get with Humzoo. Some friends who have visited my site to view photos or blogs have remarked on how easy it looks to work on a site here and how great it is laid out and used. As Courtney said, I don't need the layout work and time. I've gotten everything I could ask for and some things I didn't even know I wanted with Humzoo (no, Denny didn't pay me to say this!)

6) I might if I wanted to use it for work. Personally, I'm happy with what I have though I could imagine having a humzoo address to communicate with people who visit without having to give them another address to use. Other than that--I'm happy with my site and my name and the freedom to customize it enough to make me happy but not so much that I have to work to do it. :)

7) I'm uncomfortable with either. I guess I hadn't realized (until now) that you could protect yourself more. I've been tempted to sell things on one or the other but didn't like having to deal with the public connection with someone. I guess it is no different than an ad in a newspaper to sell something but it feels more intrusive to me.

8) I know what they are but have never used them. I know most of the IT people love them. I'm still getting my feet wet in that zone.

9) I can barely stand having a cell phone. No.

10) I prefer quality over speed unless the speed is so slow that it defeats me wanting to use it. Humzoo has moments of sluggishness. Whether my connection, web traffic, the website itself, I'm not sure but if it annoys me enough, I go read for a while. It's brief and infrequent. I love the quality of the photos and videos (now that my wireless router doesn't die for a video). :)

11. I'm never succinct. :) (I know..there wasn't an 11)

5) 1) How do you feel about the feature on sites like Facebook and Twitter that allows you to "look up" your friends by providing your email address and password? Is that something you would or would not do. I'm curious why either way.

Heck no. No handing out of passwords by this lady. I'm sorta an internet privacy vigilante, but that just seems way to trusting of facebook or twitter. I'm pretty sure they don't have my best interests at heart.

I saw some comedy sketch about how 6 months ago employers always looked up potential employees on their Facebook/Myspace websites and then made judgments about them based on these pages. Then the sketch "flashed forward" 6 months into the future where employers immediately trashed resumes of people who have these profiles. I've been sorely tempted to join LinkedIn to grow professionally, but I'm not too sure. For me there are aspects of my job that make it important to me that private information, who my friends are, etc should not be something someone can find on the internet. That's why I'm Lionheart here. People argue that the wave of the future is to connect with people online, but I'd rather personally select who to reach out to rather than have the program do it for me.

As a general observation it seems like a good way for the serving company (Facebook etc) to automatically grow their patronage/information bank. I have avoided these things like the plauge, but doesnt the thing search your outlook for email addresses and send (and therefore potentially log/save) emails to all the people you know? I can't help but feel sold out when someone I know sends that type of auto-generated email to me. Plus!

2) What are your thoughts on friend acceptance and rejection in social networks? Good or bad?

Bad, on the face it’s like revisiting picking a team in grade school dodgeball. But further its also one more thing for people to look at and make a flash judgment- lots of friends must mean this or that. This sort of goes hand and hand in the looking up friends thing. If you don't want hordes of people checking you out online then there should be a filter- like a screen name. Or just tell or email (yourself) the people that you wouldn't mind seeing your page. Unwanted visitors suck, I don't really know how to handle them, but I also dont like the people who try to friend everyone so it looks like they have scads of friends.

3) Twittering and Powncing. Both have changed the immediacy of connecting people. First it was mass email, then it was blogging (public channel), then it was social networking, then it became twittering what you are currently doing. Is that good or bad?

No twitter for me. I'm obsessive enough, I don't exactly know what it is, but I've purposely avoided it because I want to be able to step away from the computer and expierence the land of the living breathing social interactions. See my answer to # 9 and mobile devices.

4) Privacy, how important is it to you that your site is only accessible by certain people? How anonymous do you care to be?

Super important, I almost didn't sign up because I didn't want to give my email address which has my name. I thought about it for a couple days before I decided it was ok. But yeah, I'm that kind of paranoid about an internet presence. I don't mind random people looking at the site because I'm not too detailed on it. I do have a romantic image of making a friendship with folks in a pen pal kind of way. In actuality probably not too many people visit my site. I think if I was an amazing writer or had more things to say, more consistently, I'd have more readers. In any event, I tend to think, "if its on the net, anyone and everyone will read it, so filter appropriately"

5) To what degree of control do you want over the overall look and feel of your web site? Do you want to be able to completely redesign the layout from the ground up or do you like that being done for you with some options to look and feel different?

I'm not too savy on design or building of websites so I love that Humzoo does it for me. I've thought about getting of the stick and upgrading to a Humdinger and then requesting special modules of my site, like a "what's Lionheart currently reading" or something for the sidebar. I have no programming/designing capabilities myself so Humzoo is really perfect for me.

6) If you could have your own custom domain name for your web site would you buy one? I never know if this is a geek thing or if everyone would like one.

Yeah, I’d like one, but I don’t know how to go about it and I’d rather not take the time to figure it out. My husband has joked about setting up a webpage for me for write on, but we both end up prioritizing our time elsewhere.

7) eBay vs Craigslist. Do you pay for the legal protection and managed trgansaction or do you go the free route and put faith in the citizens of your community.

Depends on what I’m selling/looking for. I have usually used Craigslist because I just want to get rid of that couch or whatever. Ebay’s ok, but I prefer Etsy for Christmas shopping unique gifts. Like Courtney, I tend to agree that ebay is evil.

8) RSS feeds? Who uses them? How many people know what they are?

Love it, I use gmail reader for fun and for work, so I spend most of my daily internet time benefiting from the RSS feed.

9) Do you surf the tubes from a mobile device? If you could upload photos from that device would you?

No, I need to be able to step away. I try to keep my phone simple, its just one more thing to pick up and stare at. Sometimes I wonder if my dog looks and my husband and I and thinks we have this strange ritual of staring and poking a little metallic colored plastic box. ;-)

10) How important is the quality of video and photos to you? Does size matter? Would you rather have a faster video with poor quality or would you wait a little longer to watch a high definition video if you could?

Quality over speed. However, if speed is super slow then I’m likely to click away. Video is a really hard medium, they’re hard to create and post and I find that I’m pretty impatient with videos that aren’t edited. Hollywood has made spoiled me in that regard.

Sorry for the length, I've been thinking about these same things recently, this is a little more Faulkner-style than usual.

6) 1) Ummm...I do like typing in an old friend's name to see if she is on Facebook or Myspace; actually, I've reconnected with a few childhood friends by doing this.

2) Yeah, don't care for this.

3) Obviously, I'm out of the loop because I don't know what Twittering and Powncing are, so if Courtney thinks it's crap, it must be crap.

4) Well, I would like to post my email address on HumzOo in my About tab, but I get SO much spam through my two business addresses now, and I'm gun shy about this. I would like my HumzOo "family" to have access to my address, but not random people passing through.

5) I currently have control over my own site--well, as much as FrontPage will allow. HA! I prefer the options here on HumzOo.

6) I already have my own domain name.

7) Both - there are certain things we use Craigslist for, but still go to Ebay for some items, too. I think it's wise to be cautious on both sites.

8) What? No idea. Probably not many, including me.

9) No. And no.

10) Quality is very important, and I would wait a bit for better video, but in minutes, OK?

7) That's a lot of questions!! But about Humzoo / social networking in general - I think Humzoo is better at bringing people together than any other site I've used, mostly because of its simplicity. I've checked facebook daily for 4 years now (thank you college), and frankly I'm burned out on it. It seems like it got really big really fast, but now with applications and crap like that it's just as cluttered as MySpace and possibly even more annoying. I default to Humzoo because it's easy to both update my own information (my original draw to Facebook) and easy to keep up with others. I can click 2 or 3 times - tops - and get a snapshot of what's going on, then pay attention to the details to find what I want to read.

There's no pressure here to be anything but yourself, and I appreciate the fact that the site can be used for way more than just networking. I like that it's just structured enough to make sense, but leaves enough to the imagination that you can make it your own. I put my stuff up, and if people read it that's great, but if they don't that's okay too. I like having an online community of semi-acquaintances, and I understand that when I put something up I'm responsible for it and managing the consequences (which is why I agree with Courtney that the "add or reject friends" thing is crap.)

Anyway - I may or may not have answered a single one of your questions - but I'm glad you asked, because I do think there's a distinction between the community of Humzoo and the community built on social networking sites - and I think Humzoo is better at achieving its goal than its predecessors.

8) 1) Nifty. I haven't used Twitter yet, since I can't imagine anyone would care what I'm doing at any point in the day, but it would be kind of neat to be able to find old friends that way.

2) Good. Spam is a bad, bad thing.

3) I like to be plugged in the opposite direction. I like to know what's going on - what I'm watching on TV is probably not exciting to Joe Sixpack.

4) I wouldn't post anything online that I would be embarrassed for my mom to read. That pretty much solves privacy issues for me.

5) Allowing non-designers to control layout and color schemes is a dangerous game. Look at MySpace.

6) I have a couple of vanity domains that I don't do much with.

7) I would love to believe in the purity of fellow humans...but when it comes to buying and selling, I would rather play it safe.

8) I use RSS everyday for lots of things.

9) Yep. Blackjack 2 over 3G. I would love to be able to post pics and vid from it....and from the iPhone I'll be getting soon. :)

10) For photos, the quality is key. I would hate to sacrifice image quality to over-compression for decent photos. I suppose I would feel the same about video if I ever get around to doing anything worthwhile with an HD cam.

9) 1) How do you feel about the feature on sites like Facebook and Twitter that allows you to "look up" your friends by providing your email address and password? Is that something you would or would not do. I'm curious why either way.
I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean I can look someone up but only if I register with a name and password? If so, I don't usually do it. I don't want to have to register to do something. But, if you mean do I look up people by using their email, I do do that occasionally.

2) What are your thoughts on friend acceptance and rejection in social networks? Good or bad?
Seems pretty stupid.

3) Twittering and Powncing. Both have changed the immediacy of connecting people. First it was mass email, then it was blogging (public channel), then it was social networking, then it became twittering what you are currently doing. Is that good or bad?
Depends. I don't see a major problem with it, but it really depends on what I want to say or read. Depends on the moment and the content.

4) Privacy, how important is it to you that your site is only accessible by certain people? How anonymous do you care to be?
Ditto Courtney on this one. "I have a different place I go for privacy. Mostly, it's not important to me."

5) To what degree of control do you want over the overall look and feel of your web site? Do you want to be able to completely redesign the layout from the ground up or do you like that being done for you with some options to look and feel different?
Thought I'd probably say I'd want complete control, in reality I would never take the time to do the whole thing. So realistically, having just options is enough.

6) If you could have your own custom domain name for your web site would you buy one? I never know if this is a geek thing or if everyone would like one.
Nope. Unless it's work related, it's seems a bit self-important.

7) eBay vs Craigslist. Do you pay for the legal protection and managed transaction or do you go the free route and put faith in the citizens of your community.
I dislike eBay. I would rather use Craigslist any day. Why... not sure. Partly b/c it's local. No shipping fees. It just feels more "right" to get things locally. It feel more like I am participating in my community, which I think is a good thing.

8) RSS feeds? Who uses them? How many people know what they are?
LOVE them! I have a pretty geeky husband though, which is how I got into them. I have discovered that many people *think* they know what RSS feeds are but they are actually confused or simply have the concept wrong.

9) Do you surf the tubes from a mobile device? If you could upload photos from that device would you?
Sadly, no. I am behind on this. Someday I will get an iphone. And yes, I will upload photos from there (to flickr if nowhere else).

10) How important is the quality of video and photos to you? Does size matter? Would you rather have a faster video with poor quality or would you wait a little longer to watch a high definition video if you could?
Depends. I think there is a balance (especially for video), but I can't tell you exactly where that balance is. For photos, I like to have both options.

10) 1. I have no interest in looking up old friends.

2. Friends acceptance/rejection is annoying and silly.

3.I like this setup. Didn't know it was twittering. I think I stopped learning after I found humzoo. I stopped searching anyway. Is that bad?

4.I wish there was an option to have a private area. I actually have a private blog with four friends and it works out great. Sometimes there are things to mull over that are not ready for the World Wide Web....

5. I like having options to choose from. It's fun to change things up once in a while. I wish I could build from the ground up. I would need good instructions.

6.I might buy one

7. I sell on Ebay and buy on Craigslist

8. I have them on my other blog..... ROFL, but I don't use RSS feeds myself.

9. Nope, I'm not a mobile surfer. I don't even like to answer the phone in the car. I don't like to answer the phone at all. In fact, I dont' know where my cell phone is......

10. I like the size of the photos here on humzoo, and their quality. I do have to wait for the video, but it's worth it. I choose quality. I can wait a moment or two. But with photos I want size and quality. I have it here.

9.

11) The privacy question is the only one I actually have any sort of opinion on. Because of teaching, I always have little teen-aged eyes looking for me. I just have to be hyper-aware of what I post. That's fine. If I wanted anonymity, I'd go elsewhere.

12) Question #9 caught my attention. Things happen around me sometimes. ie a baby being born in Wal-Mart. I want to grab a hold of my inner-journalist and tell the world what's happening before anyone else has the chance. I would love to be able to upload the photos via iPhone.

13) 1) I don’t use that feature

2) it reminds me of the Yes, No or Maybe notes that get passed around when you’re a preteen

3) no twittering for me

4) I don’t think there is any real privacy on the net…if you don’t want people to see something then don’t post it .

5) Yes, I would like the ability to customize the whole thing but I think others will want options like you already provide.

6) yes please

7) I use both

8) I don’t use them

9) yes, yes please

10) quality is important

14) 1) I'm not big on looking people up. If I wanted to be found - you would know where I am.

2) Eh - good at weeding out the weirdos. I get 2-3 requests each week from Myspace from people I don't even know - that I can find no connection with other then they are a myspace whore.

3) I like twittering - at times. It can get excessive tho. I really don't need to know that someone is going to the bathroom.

4) Privacy is important - but if I don't want people to know something - then I don't post it on the internet.

5) I like to have options that soemone else has designed for me.

6) This is a geek thing.

7) I have used both eBay and craigslist and freecycle. I like the legal protection that eBay offers.

8) I have no idea what an RSS feed is. I see links to them and such but have no clue.

9) If I had a new nifty iPhone - I would surf the tubes from my phone and be interested in posting photos from my phone also.

10) Video and picture quality is important. After all - we don't want to watch Dave's videos with a crappy picture.

15) 1) I've used the "friendfinder" on facebook and it's OK. I actually didn't find too many people that way; just a bunch of random people I'd sent an e-mail to at some point in my life, but not necessarily people I want to be in touch with. But I look up people from my past all the time. If a name pops into my head, I look them up on Facebook or Classmates.com. I have found a couple long-lost friends that way.

2) I don't accept people unless I know them well in real life or extensively on-line. I can only think of one time I've rejected or been rejected by anyone I actually know.

3) I had to look up what Twitter was. Never heard of it. Seems like a(nother) waste of time.

4) I'm a private person by nature. I don't post a lot of personal info.

5) I'd like options for changing colors, fonts or graphics (but that's already available here if you pay, right?), but I don't need to mess with the structure too much.

6) I have one already, but I haven't done much with my website yet.

7) I've only used ebay a few times, never bought or sold anything on craigslist.

8) I sort of know what they are, but I don't use them. If I'm interested enough in a particular site, I would probably visit it regularly anyway.

9) don't have one

10) quality

16) I like to eat string cheese.