The problem with reading dozens and dozens of blogs is that you eventually start to think you've nothing left to say that hasn't already been said on somebody else's blog.

For instance, you might come across an interesting article about enterprise software and consider writing your reactions. Maybe you think you'll write about the importance of data quality, data warehousing and analytics as alternatives to SOA as the flavor of the day. But first you decide to do a Technorati search and a Google blog search, and then you get overwhelmed reading what everyone else has said about the article and you think they're expressing themselves so much more concretely and knowledgeably than you probably could, so you close down every tab you've opened within Firefox on the subject (there's probably 13 or 14 of them by now) and just forget the whole thing (except as an abstract, second-person kind of example, of course).

Or maybe this happens. You create a marketplace post on Facebook within your local network for "Childcare needed in my home." You exchange e-mails with a few young women and decide to interview one of them. Turns out, she's perfect. She lives right around the corner, has tons of experience, knows your neighbors, graduated high school with people you know and has local references who are also some of your family acquaintances. You hire her and can't believe you found her on the Internet. Facebook is amazing.

That evening you browse through her friends list (she's a college student, so she has hundreds and hundreds of Facebook friends) and send friend requests to some of the names you recognize. They are college students too, and they were on Facebook long before Facebook opened itself to the masses. Some of them accept you eagerly as a friend. But suddenly you feel like you're spying on their private worlds and wonder if they feel encroached upon by (gasp) An Old Person. I mean, here they are posting photos of wild, dorm-room parties and joining groups called Hookah Lovahs (things you might have done as a college student yourself), and then one day they get friend requests from their Aunt Suzie in Topeka and some co-worker of their father's named Joe. That's not fun for them. That's like having their sixth grade math teacher move in to the dorm room down the hall. They don't want him to know what goes on in their dorm at all hours of the day.

So you wake up the next morning thinking about all of this and wondering where the college kids will go online next to escape us Old People and decide that the idea would make a good blog post, but then you drink your coffee and read your morning rss feeds, and you see at least two bloggers have already summed up some of what you've just been thinking:

1. Dennis McDonald explains why his oldest daughter doesn't want him on Facebook.
2. Eric Weaver disputes the idea of "fogeys" taking over Facebook.

I agree with Eric that Facebook actually offers a lot for us "fogeys," as do some of the other sites he mentions. But I also agree with Dennis that the Web is always evolving & those college kids will probably beat us to the next big site ... partially, perhaps, in an effort to escape us.

You know, for somebody who thought she didn't have anything original to add, I kind of ended up with a lot to say. Maybe that's a lesson in itself.