I joined a new online community website, wondering if I could ever get more value than I do from other websites.

I currently blog about my own experiences and use instant messaging to keep in touch with some people. I am fairly quiet but active on two photography related forums.

This new site is positioning itself to unify all the “new media” together. Instant messaging, photos, blog posting, etc. The site was functional with a web browser or Windows/Mac client.

I found the functionality between the clients and website very different. I was hoping to use some features of the website, but they were only “available” in the Windows client. I installed the client, found the feature I wanted, and used it. But I never saw the results on the website, nor in the client.

I mistakenly told my client about one of my instant messaging clients, wondering what it could possibly offer by proxying my IM traffic (aside from possibly giving away my password). Not much, it turned out. I had trouble deleting my IM account information from their system. I bet if I re-installed the client today, it would automatically log me into IM, which I explicitly told it not to. Bother.

I decided I was done with the service, having been disappointed and then deceived by a client I had to install on an operating system I don’t normally use. None of the content I contributed even showed up in “latest photos” or “latest blogs” site areas. It felt like my content was just falling into the bitbucket.

I also decided that social websites don’t work unless your friends all use them in the same way.

So please delete me, I asked.

The response was, “hide your profile and delete your posts” which is not what I was asking for. Another email volley brought back, “your email will be deleted from our system shortly”. What seems deleted is my original request. Google is still indexing the content I posted. I can still login to the account.

Maybe I never had the “cool guy” bit set in my account? Were my photos not worthy to be seen on their site?

I have to login later and manually remove all my content and forever waste space on their servers with an unused account. That, and storing my IM password for someone else to discover.