SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES—Its time to move on

Time flies quickly; a few years ago people started communicating by using the social networking methods. It was developed by the end of the 1990s, using wired gadgets such as telephones or ham radios. Today, the internet has reshaped our world beyond our imagination.

 

Even before the Internet, social networking existed. In a nutshell, social networking is when a person uses already existing contacts to meet new people as potential social or business links. Such links, in turn, will help expand future connections. It saves time. In our busy lives, making time to schedule face to face meetings doesn't fit into our schedules. We can "catch up with one another" as time permits.  

Basically, about one to two million accounts sign on everyday. There are about a hundred thousand users. It also has become a very good source of information. These websites help us interact with people from remote places.
People born after 1990, who were just five-years-old or younger when the use of Internet became mainstream in 1995, have grown up in a world dominated by online social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. Many people today cannot remember a world without the Internet, it may be “quite different for teens and children who cannot imagine a world where you can't go online to talk and apply the same principles to real-world interpersonal communications, mostly to a dysfunctional outcome.

In current position, there are literally thousands of social networking sites available on Internet. The World now spends over 110 billion minutes on social networks and blog sites. This equates to 22 percent of all time online or one in every four and half minutes. The most important reason is to get in contact with new people (31%). The second most valued was to keep in touch with their friends (21%), whereas the third was general socializing (14%). A total of 11 different reasons and several sub-reasons were identified. 

The interesting element is that most of the social networking activities happen between 6 pm and 10 pm. In other words, Indian online users aren’t using social media during work hours (which is usually an assumed fact). 50.8 percent of the total online population in the Asia-Pacific region visited a social networking site in February 2010, reaching a total of 240.3 million visitors..

The study found Russia to have the world’s most engaged social networking audience, with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month. Brazil is also topping the charts with the highest percentage (86%) of Internet consumers visiting a social network. The popularity of social networking in Brazil is due to the Orkut phenomenon. According to Greenlight Wireless, MySpace is the first social networking site to appear among the top five most highly visited sites by Skweezer's mobile users.

 

The National School Boards Association reports, that almost 60 percent of students who use social networking, talk about education topics online.  

Users of social networking site:

MySpace - 345,130,806
Facebook - 722,434,829
Hi5 -8,491,287
Friendster - 6,896,127
Orkut - 9,396,000
Bebo - 14,368,423
Tagged - 5,100,000

Most of the social networks we included are dominated by the age group 35-44.It’s a bit surprising that not one single site had the age group 18 – 24.Bebo appeals to a much younger audience than the other sites with 44% of its users being aged 17 or less. For MySpace, this number is also large; 33%.

Classmates.com has the largest share of users being aged 65 or more, 8%, and 78% are 35 or older. 64% of Twitter’s users are aged 35 or older. 61% of Facebook’s users are aged 35 or older.

Future in social networking sites as something that depends on technology. If the technology used for the networks changes and becomes even more powerful and full featured, more young people will want to use the networks. This will increase the amount of people on the social sites, and increase revenue for those who own them.

MOHUYA ROY

“Social-Networking Aaj Kal”- a Boon or Bane

Today’s world is a global village, where someone, seated in one corner of the world, befriends another, present in the other distant corner. This magical connectivity, which could have only been imagined at one time, has been made possible by the emergence of “SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES”, or in short SNS’s.

We define social network sites as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) Construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site.

The world has witnessed the birth of several such social networking sites through the years: in 1996, came in Six Degrees .com,’99 saw the emergence of Asian Avenue, Live Journal; in the year 2000, there appeared Mi Gente;CyWorld in 2001; Friendster in 2002;in 2003 the world saw the inception of Orkut,Linked In, Dogster, My space,Tribe.net,Hi5;in 2005 ,You Tube,Yahoo!360,Xange made their appearance; in 2006 Windows Live Spaces,Facebook(Corporate Networks) made a grand entry.

Ever since their inception, various SNS’s, such as Orkut, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, My Space, CyberWorld have attracted millions of users from around the world, from different walks of life and having different beliefs, cultures etc. These SNS’s have become an integral part of life where people not only maintain pre-existing social contacts, but also end up befriending strangers. They share their views on different socio-economic- political, environmental and other issues, as also, share special moments of their lives through photo or video-sharing. Be it maintaining contacts with a business client, or an old friend, out of sight for a long time, SNS’s serve both professional as well as personal purposes. They may be used by a business organization, as such, or an administrative body for official purposes and business networking, or a community (ethnic or religious, or political etc.) to propagate its ideas, or even a student to access information. Different media organizations too, (both print and electronic) have their profiles in these sites for access to information and news for the hoi-polloi. Today, there are special SNS’s for fathers, housewives, and even people with an alternate sexuality, where they interact and share their views on a global platform. Truly, these social networking sites aid not only interpersonal communication, but communication between the masses world wide and have thus brought the whole world on our computer table or on our lap.

  
However, no boon comes without a bane. Given the grand, worldwide presence of SNS’s, people tend to be blinded by the outward flamboyance and glitz associated with them, seldom aware of the negative outcomes. Well almost like drug-addicts, people, particularly teenagers become addicted to these sites and develop habits of self-display and narcissistic fascination, in the long run, and end up losing privacy of personal life. The very concept of ‘friendship’, in fact, has got changed, as such, into a bond where every thing is superficial and virtual. Unscrupulous companies and ad agencies come up with advertisements of products and services, with false promises that lead people astray. To add to the woes, are these flesh traders who tempt youngsters into their trap through exhibition of naturism and explicitly.

To start with, such SNS’s had started off with the ideal of a great social responsibility of social linkage. This gradual drift from the main motto of serving philanthropic interests is all a result of misuse of this mighty platform by man. No platform or instrument is “good” or “bad” in itself; it all depends on how we use it. We all have heard this saying “with great power, comes great responsibilities”. The whole Earth is looking forward, perhaps, to a better future, where such great inventions of mankind as SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES, will be used with such sense of responsibility towards our present generation and our future.


.

DEEPAK