I have been thinking of writing a post about social networking sites for so long. I never had enough time to do a research on that. Last week, just out of curiosity, I checked the list of social networking sites in Google, the universal search engine, and got surprised by the numbers. Oh God, more than 350! The names I was familiar with were a handful - Facebook, Orkut, Twitter, Yahoo 360, My Space, bebo, hi5, netlog, Tagged. But the rest were alien to me.
When I started using Orkut, about 4 years back, I didn’t know what it was. I signed up coz of peer pressure. My friends said that Orkut was a great way to communicate and be in touch; unlike the old ways - chats or mails! They said it was quite transparent. “everybody can see everybody” and “everybody can read about everybody’s information”. That was more than enough for a college girl. I took the plunge and joined Orkut. I must admit that I haven’t uncovered it completely, yet. The immediate benefit that I could discover my long last friends at Orkut.
Then so many invitations started coming in. Asking me to join a network or other. I in a temptation to find old and new friends, did give to couple of requests. But I must admit that after some point it is a waste of time. I would find the same set of friends in every social networking site. Why would I need so many platforms to keep in touch with same set of friends?
Let me come back to social networking sites, what are they? Theoretically one can say social network websites focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. (Am so fond of definitions:)). Most of the social network sites provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instant messaging services and keep adding more features to their sites to make the sites more vibrant and popular.
Most of the social sites do follow the theory and more. You have a myriad of features to hold your interest to the sites. But still I really don’t understand how one can manage many sites at a time!!! I have many friends who use more than 10 social sites at a time and I am struggling to use just two. (Actually am an active Orkut member, but once in a blue moon, I check facebook).
On the business front, social media play an important role. Building brand through social media is gaining importance. Companies are investing in ensuring they have an impactful presence.
When it comes to individuals, “it is popularity contest” (Ganesh’s opinion), people are so keen to sign up with many sites and keep adding more friends to win this contest!!! Otherwise I don’t see any benefits out of it :) (apart from getting connected and winning the popularity show!)
