Social networking has become the craze of the day. Some of the features that make networking site like Orkut a favourite and “must access” website for most people today are:
· Getting connected easily with anyone and everyone- a stranger/ friend/ ally/ collaborator far and wide by way of scraps
· Posting and sharing photos and videos
· Joining communities that provide a forum/ platform/ set of tools for people to have private, semiprivate, or public gatherings on the site regardless of geography or time.
I remember how all of a sudden I got this email invitation from my buddy in June 2006, to join Orkut and how I was wondering in my head about what this Orkut could be all about. Around that time, I had heard a little about it so I thought of exploring further ahead and no sooner I found myself as a member since having a gmail account gave me easy access to membership in Orkut.
Once I entered this planet, I was asked to create a profile that can evince information varying from “my hometown” to “things I learned from my past relationship”. So it’s entirely left to the sole discretion of the user as to how much of information to provide. Orkut organizes the profile information of any user in 3 broad categories: Social, Professional & Personal.
I also remember during my second day the number of friends in my list was 10 and within the first week of joining Orkut the number increased to 30. It’s been two years or so and my present number of friends is 300 (includes only people I know; again Orkut has made classifications in this category- haven’t met, acquaintance, friend, good friend, best friend). On the same context, there are people who have such huge number of friends on their list as they include anyone and everyone they fancy or who fancies them. I myself receive an average of 2 requests almost on a daily basis from strangers with one-liners such as, “Can I make friends with you? or You are cute, please by my friend.” I find such requests nonsensical and immediately discard them. There are cases when a person wants to extend a rapport built from a one-day meeting to a longer association, they choose forums like Orkut/ Facebook to add that new friend of theirs and thereby stay in touch.
It is commonly warned about posting pictures in Orkut especially for girls, as there can be misuse of pictures by other users. However this hasn’t stopped me from posting my pictures as lately, Orkut has enhanced its privacy settings such that only the user’s friends (those in the user’s list) can access the photos, scraps and videos. And if at any point if one has been targeted with abusive and vulgur expressions either in scraps or communities, Orkut provides for “Report abuse” option. If such request is given by a large number of users, the profile of the ‘user in crime’ will be deleted from Orkut by Google. Talking about communities, existing ones can migrate online and flourish in an interactive environment (church youth group, alumni organizations), providing a virtual home for groups interested in sharing, organizing and communicating information valuable to cultivating vibrant communities
Just like Orkut, Facebook too has become my “daily must open” website along with my email sites and I spend at least half an hour on each of these sites exclusively. I joined Facebook very recently; probably less than a year, again by way of invitation, but unlike Orkut this doesn’t need any specific email id- anyone with any email id can join. And I enjoy it much better than Orkut. Simply because of the USP of Facebook- the variety of applications that are test based. People can add applications like “What is the color of your heart? or Which sign you should date? or which fruit are you?” Simple questions that entice you to add such application which further makes you do a test and then send this application to (a minimum of) 15 friends, only by doing so it enables you to check your results. Unique, pretty nice, introspective and engaging- few keywords I would attribute to Facebook.
These networking sites have made a big difference to my life, rather my social life as it has expanded my circle of friends and helped me get connected to a vast number of people-new and old, my existing classmates, my school and college friends- people I had no idea whether and how I would get in touch with them- Orkut and Facebook brought them all under one umbrella for me.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
10 comments:
Okay, so social networking sites are a great way to keep in touch with friends, but how much time do they take out of your day? Do you find that your work doesn't get done because you are online? I think that the time consuming element and privacy are my biggest issues with social networking sites. I am not even a member of any sites, but I sometimes find myself going on just to see the pictures my friends have posted of me and hours will pass. Privacy is also a big concern of mine. The whole idea of a news feed on facebook was an issue for awhile, because it tracks every move that you make. I think it is kind of creepy, however; they have put new privacy measures into place to limit who can see what. I did a study on cell phone use last semester and I found that people could not live without their cell phones, do you think people could go a week without facebook? I find it hard to believe that people could..it would be interesting to find out!
That is a very good point Chondra. Privacy settings really are becoming an issue with social networking sites like Orkut and Facebook because it is sometimes hard for these sites to provide an element of privacy while still being a public and open site. I think sites are better off being completely private or completely public instead of walking such a fine line. For instance, I like Facebook much better when it was a closed site, and only people in college could access it. It has just become too open and public for me, like with the creation of the newsfeed and when they started using Beacon. It's just too much.
One other thing I wanted to bring up about social networking is the fact that sometimes I used to find myself communicating with certain people by Facebook only, instead of calling them or actually spending time face-to-face with them. It was very easy to contact such a large number of people online, but I found myself limiting my offline time with them as well. In this way, Facebook became somewhat "anti-community."
The problem of privacy will always be an issue as long as social networking sites are popular. While facebook has angered some of its users by switching from a closed site to more of an open one, their privacy options continue to improve and calm the uneasiness of its users.
I enjoyed Jon's comment on facebook becoming an anti-community. I would have to agree that a large portion of the site's population use facebook to communicate with friends and that in turn may be their only form of communication. The fact of the matter though is that since facebook connects you with old friends, such impersonal communication is only appropriate and by all means, easy. While some may worry that our social interactions are being limited because of such sites, I think that they are only helped (keeping up with friends with little effort) by social networking sites allowing free and easy communication.
I have to agree with Sonia on this one. For me joining Facebook for the first time was love at first site. It was like they created this site just for people like me. I immediately found my old highschool friends that I hadn't contacted in years and started accumulating friends on a daily basis. Almost every major move that facebook has made has been an improvement in my opinion. Yes I was pretty upset about the news feed and yes I did join a group to boycott it, but after MZ wrote that lovely apology letter and explained the importance of it I jumped on board. I figured out the privacy settings so that the newsfeed would only post what I wanted it to. I love when it moved to highschools and then regions because that meant more friends for me! Now my entire family are my facebook friends: both my parents and my siblings are on facebook, as well as all of my cousins. Its not the only way And when you finally do see those people in person, facebook gives you something to talk about. ("did you see what I saw on facebook?" or "I see that your doing this now.") I don't think that facebook has to take too much time out of your day. I spend about ten minutes a day, if that, just to check what notifications I have and see what the newsfeed has to say about my friends. I try not to get sucked into looking at everyone's page, and it's not that hard once you get used to the site. I think facebook is Gods gift to socialites and I will go to battle for it.
One of the main issues that I have with any social networking site is privacy. Your blog talks about girls and the use of photos on their sites. Users must take steps to not post images they would not want to be veiwed by just anyone. If it's an image you would not want your Grandmother to see, its probably not a good idea to post it to a global audience.
One of the reasons stated as a "Must Access" website was that anyone can get connected easily, anyone and everyone, even a stranger.
I do have a Facebook account, but recently when I met The Zuck at SXSW he asked me why I never log in to my account, I told him it was because I didn't want people like him accessing my information.
I for one am all for the development of these privacy controls. I've left facebook several times because I just didn't want everyone to have access to all the material I was posting, especially pictures. At SXSW, here in Austin, there was lots of talk about "granular privacy controls" and literally the next day, my facebook lets me know that I can now create different lists of groups who can each have a varying degree of access to my profile. I am what you would call a "double dipper"-I have both a facebook and a myspace site. However, I have very little overlap in friends on the sites. This is primarily why I still keep my facebook site. Jon, I, unlike you, was happy when they opened up facebook to everyone, but I was FURIOUS when they started the mini feeds. That was the first time I left facebook. I was (wrongly) afraid that people would know which profiles I'd been looking at all day and the idea of that made me uncomfortable. But I came back when they allowed us to delete the mini feeds we didn't want to publish. Its difficult with social networking because I think everyone goes through a cycle...at first you are all about it and you spend hours or your day wasting your time seeing what your friends and their friends are up to. But then after a couple of years, it starts to fizzle out...atleast for me. I wonder if in 1 year I'll even have a facebook or a myspace. I probably will but I'm sure all my pictures and old comments will be hidden and I'll just use it to send messages and update my status. I'm fine with that level of privacy :).
I think you touch on both the reason for quick success and the stumbling block of social networking sites. Because they have this designed social network, diffusion happens in an almost deterministic manner. Since it's only useful if you hook others, that ensures I quick growth. However, I wonder if the lack of true utility apps suggests a slow curve in these sites becoming more than fancy rolodecks. (Does it make me old to have that reference available to me?)
How popular is orkut in the class outside the assignment? I never thought of it as anywhere near the level of Facebook. But this could my own slow and growing knowledge of SNs.
I've been a member of Facebook for over 4 years now and I hardly go a day without checking it at least once. Facebook has changed a lot over that period of time, the most notable of which was when they added the social wall that posted practically everything that your friends did on facebook. It took a little (or for some, a lot) of getting used to and I remember friends posting that if Facebook did not take that off that they would cancel their Facebook account. It was definitely borderline privacy infringement, and a bit creepy for most people to accept. I didn't like the idea myself for the first month or so that it began, but as time passed people, myself included, began to accept it. Now hardly anyone bats an eye when they see it as the majority of Facebook users have become accustomed to seeing it. Facebook has become so big and such a part of my daily routine that I honestly couldn't picture myself without it. OK, maybe I could, but it wouldn't be the same. I use Facebook to post meetings, keep up to date with friends from out of town, and to just talk with people in general like texting on my phone. I'm curious as well if people will become as dependant on Facebook as we are on cellphones.
Waoh! Great discussion, dont know where to begin. I must say again (I hate to reat to people who have already heard this). But I started getting all these request from friends after college to join these networking sites. It all started with sites like Hi5 and all. So far, I have resisted them one main concern - privacy issue. I love people, but I don't want everyone having access to my information online. However, after years of reluctance, I am at the point where I am having to decide if I am putting myself at a disadvantage by not joining a networking site like Facebook. I have a LinkedIn account and I love it because it is professional and useful - plus you will never see a picture of me drunk at a party on my LinkedIn profile. Lately, I have realized that since all my friends are now on networking sites and refuse to communicate with me via traditional channels like phones and emails, I am slowly being left behind. The attempts by sites like Facebook to adopt more privacy settings and choices for users make it much likely that I will be on Facebook soon. Anybody out there want to friend me?
I think privacy concerns are part of what's pushing the SN platform. Less spam on a facebook and less unsolicited calls, like on a phone.
Plus, the once a day Facebook phenom seems to counteract the old problem of checking your email and voicemail every few minutes. I increasingly suspect that Facebook's pwoer may be in savvy use to actually tone down the amount of tech in one's life.
Though accessibility and literacy remain huge concerns, this does speak to a need. Cafe users can exist in the once a day Facebook culture more easily than an email or voicemail culture if they can't afford a personal computer or phone to constantly check messages.
But I stick to what I said in another blog entry that easier has indirect consequences even with the benies.
Post a Comment