One of the most commonly used social networking sites today is Orkut and I joined the community two years back, just before I joined Manipal Institute of Communication. The reason behind my joining Orkut was not to find out about the college from the students who were already on the network; however that is one of the advantages of Orkut. The main reason why I joined Orkut was to get in touch with my school friends. There are so many communities on Orkut, ranging from religious to fun and games. One of the biggest advantages of Orkut is that we can get in touch with our long lost friends.
Being born and brought up in Lucknow (north India) my entire education up till my graduation was done there. Then I moved to Mangalore and lost contact with a lot of my childhood friends. As soon as I had joined Orkut I became part of the community which had been developed by the other ex – students of my school and college who like me had lost touch with a lot of their own friends. This is one of the most amazing facilities provided by Orkut.
Besides providing the opportunity of helping friends who have not been in touch with each other in many years, Orkut also provides people the facility to share pictures and communicate through scraps. I use Orkut to keep in touch with all those friends of mine whom I had grown up with and to keep them updated with pictures and scraps to tell them how life down south has been for me. And they in turn share the pictures of all the things that they do. Another facility offered and which is avidly used by many including me is to write testimonials for the people who have made a mark in our lives. I have written testimonials for all of those friends of mine whom I had to leave when I moved out of Lucknow and have received testimonials in turn. Writing a testimonial for a friend makes that person feel very special. It is an opportunity to tell the other person in words what actually he/she means to us. In our everyday lives we forget to tell our friends how much they mean to us and Orkut through the facility of testimonials has provided us with the opportunity to convey our feelings about our friends.
One of the biggest advantages of Orkut and one of the main reasons is that it is extremely user friendly and also one of the main reasons why Orkut is such a hit with the youth as well as the older people in the country. Despite the fact that Facebook provides a lot more applications as compared to Orkut, it is still not as popular as the latter because it is not as user friendly. On great disadvantage of Orkut is the fact that it gives no privacy for ones personal profile. Just anyone can visit my profile and take the pictures which I have stored on my Orkut album. There have been many cases where false profiles have been created for girls by vengeful men who morph the face of these women on the bodies of nudes.
Orkut is basically a networking site which addicts people to it by the number of interactive facilities provided by it, and it was no different for me. In the first few weeks after creating an Orkut account for myself, I would spend hours together on the net just wasting my time. But this addiction wares off and communicating reduces to just getting in touch and keeping old friends informed and nothing else. There have been times when I did not check my account for weeks at an end. Orkut, like many other forms of entertainment which the new media provides for us, is a means to keep us occupied.
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Privacy is one of those things that is a concern of everyone…everywhere. I recently had to present news in our class and the article was about Facebook, specifically privacy concerns. I am not a member of any social networking sites, but I imagine if I were privacy would be one of my biggest concerns. Facebook recently gave its users the option to create categories for viewing of content. I think that this was a really good thing to implement, because so many employers and even professors are going online. I think it will help people to be themselves with their friends and families while at the same time provide those other groups with bits and pieces of who they really are.
You mentioned the idea of testimonials. I like that idea, I completely agree that we do sometimes take advantage of those around us and we don't always take the time to let them know we care. I guess facebook kind of does that with the gift option that it is. I mean if I spend the money on a gift, I would hope they knew I cared about them.
You also mentioned the idea of addiction. I have seen so many of my friends spend hours on facebook and myspace. While the tool is great, I think that it has the potential to take away from the things that need to be done, like school work =). I can't lie, I have pictures of myself on friend’s pages and of course I want to look at them, and even this takes hours out of my day. Are social networking sites addicting? TOTALLY!!
"Another facility offered and which is avidly used by many including me is to write testimonials for the people who have made a mark in our lives. I have written testimonials for all of those friends of mine whom I had to leave when I moved out of Lucknow and have received testimonials in turn. Writing a testimonial for a friend makes that person feel very special. It is an opportunity to tell the other person in words what actually he/she means to us. In our everyday lives we forget to tell our friends how much they mean to us and Orkut through the facility of testimonials has provided us with the opportunity to convey our feelings about our friends."
Angela, this is something I have not seen on social networking sites, only "gifts" on Facebook like Chondra has stated. It seems like it is a unique feature of Orkut. When you can write how our friends and family mean to us, this makes social networking much more of a emotional tool. Sure we can write on the wall of Facebook, but other people can see it. I am sure you can hide testimonials on Orkut, for privacy concerns. Addiction to Facebook and Myspace concerns me when the computers and computer labs at your university are being used for social networking sites. I believe this is a abuse of the resources we are given. There is not much productive use one can get from looking at profiles and commenting on peoples pages all day. I use SNS but am not overly engaged to it ,like some of my peers.
Seriously, I have learned a looooot about social networking websites from this class. I am very surprised to see how deeply you guys are into, how many researches have been conducted, and there are still a lot more we need to talk about globally.
I believe that social networks are a really good way to establish or maintain connections and relationships with those that you do not see or talk to very often. But, I often find myself in a smaller social circle on Facebook and Myspace. Even though I have a lot of friends on these networks, I usually only interact with my close "real" friends - the ones that I see or talk to on a weekly or daily basis. It's neat to see how people use these networks. Usually once an old friendship is re-established, a few "How are you doing?" comments get posted, and then the relationship sort of goes stale. It's still there if you need that person, but some of them really aren't that important to you. But the feeling of knowing you can get in touch with them by this social network is nice.
I've always thought of social networking sites as simply a means to keep in touch with friends and acquaintances. And, maybe even to meet new people. But I honestly never really stopped to think of them as a channel for entertainment, too.
It could be argued that social networking sites are really more entertainment than anything else, now that I think about it. Especially if you consider all the applications that can be used or uploaded, how much time people spend personalizing their spaces, and all the music and video clips available for viewing. Not to mention how easy it is to fill free time by playing on these sites. Crazy!
I agree that social networking sites can be addicting. But I'm curious to know who uses these sites most in India. Are users mostly students?
I love what you said Heather, about social networking being about entertainment. I think that's an evolution it takes time to realize when you get involved with social networking. At first it's about keeping in touch but then you realize that its only a jumping off point for relationships, and more about all the various entertainment uses. I must say, and I hate sounding like somewhat of an elitist but most people who are into social networking need to actually have a substantial network set up to realize the variety of uses social networking provides in daily life. If you don't have a network, its very difficult to realize all the uses. Its almost like delivering a speech without an audience. Its almost a form of self marketing, really. I didn't get it until my network of real life friends starting migrating to these same sites. That's sort of awful in a way. But comforting at the same time.
Myspace, much like Orkut, has its pluses, but overall I have been discontent with the spam and fake profiles. It is annoying to get those messages and it is one of the reasons why I tend to stay away from the site. I personally prefer Facebook because it is cleaner design-wise.
I agree that social networking sites like these are addicting at first and help waste time. Facebook is making strides at begin more than connecting with old friends. Basically, if you only communicate with friends on a site and not in real life, the entertainment value begins to wear off at a certain point.
Speaking of social networking as a form of entertainment.. This reminds me what what the creator of Facebook said about wanting to have the entire world on Facebook in five years. Facebook and, to a certain extent google, seem to want to have a monopoly on our attention. I know of many people to have Facebook just so they can play the scrabble game.
Testimonials are like recommendations on LinkedIn. You can write a recommendation about someone with which you worked. Usually, if you write a recommendation for someone, they write one back for you. That seems to be the accepted protocol. I haven't gotten around to doing any recommendations for people, need to consider my role as a prof, not wanting to show favoritism, but also not wanting to write recommendations that are meaningless.
And, it seems that Facebook's strategy has changed from deep engagement with the platform to seamless integration with the rest of the Web. I think MZ realized pretty quickly that he didn't want to become another AOL.
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