 If your social networking still consists of talking over the
back fence or meeting people at a church social, you are way behind the curve.
The latest way of interacting with others is an online phenomenon dubbed
“online social networking”.
It started way back in 1995 with a website called classmates.com where you could interact
with classmates from the various schools you attended. Over the years
classmates.com expanded to include workplaces and military. It currently boasts
about 40 million members.
Classmates.com and other older networking sites have all
been dwarfed by MySpace which currently boasts over 150 million
members and is the third most popular website in the United States. At MySpace
and most other social networking websites you can post pictures and videos and
create online journals or blogs. MySpace and most other services of this type
are free.
To join you create a profile with as much or as little
information as you choose. You can create a profile that reflects the real you
or a made-up personality. (Remember, on the Internet, no one knows if you are a
man, a woman or a dog!) Then you invite your friends to join you. You expand
your circle of friends by adding friends who are already members. Then you can
create groups, instant message with friends, add to your journal, and read
about others activities. At most sites you have the choice of making your
profile available to everyone or just to your invited friends.
Although MySpace is currently the biggest, several other
social networking sites are gaining ground. Many MySpace users are defecting to
Facebook which has a cleaner interface
and some features not found in MySpace and other sites. For instance, if you
have a Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, MSN or
AOL email, you can enter your email login and password and Facebook will
automatically search your address book and give you a list of your friends who
are already on Facebook. Also Facebook is made up of networks, individual
schools, companies and regions which narrows your scope of friends. Facebook
currently has over 19 million users and more than 47,000 regional, work, and
school networks.
In general the newest social networks are going back to the
classmates.com idea and having a focus to create relationships. Many are concentrating
on niches like pets, travel, tennis, cars, golf, and other hobbies and
interests. For instance, Joga , a site developed
by Nike & Google, is a social-networking
site where soccer players can share soccer experiences and enjoy soccer photos
and videos. Linkedin is a website for
business professionals where more than 9 million members meet to form
partnerships, get jobs, and share information.
Another trend is
social networking that follows your activities and is with you everywhere. Twitter is a rapidly growing website of this
type. At Twitter, you simply enter your current activities and watch as your
friends enter their activities. Twitter has been described as a type of
cyberstalking, but in reality it is more like bragging about your daily
activities or non-activities, and living vicariously through others daily
lives. You can add to your daily log or view your friends activities through
your cell phone or PDA as well as you can at your computer. So Twitter can be
your constant companion. Although I see nothing compelling about Twitter, many
users have reported it as amazingly addictive. This is confirmed by the
websites rapidly growing numbers and widespread use. Even presidential
candidate John Edwards is a twitter. You can follow his daily activities at www.twitter.com/johnedwards.
Online social networking is a trend that is constantly
changing, but always drawing more and more users. It doesn’t cost anything to
join any of these sites, so you may want to try them out just to see how face-to-face
relationships are being supplanted by new online networking.
NOTE: To meet and mingle with others online, you can also check out the Compu-KISS Message Boards where you can post comments and read what others think. It's a friendly mini-community.
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