Social Networking

How do we connect with our friends? In the past when there are limited technology, we communicate to each other via postal mail (snail mail), pagers, and public telephones. We get to know each other only through formal introduction face to face and in their social context. To get into activities with friends, we call up each other, fix a time and place, and will be there on time or else there's no way to contact except via the home telephone.

Today, we have mobile phone which we can use to contact our friends wherever and whenever they are. Official documents can be sent through Electronic Mails in an instant. Public telephones have become obsolete and pagers are  rare today. When we meet new friends, we can know them through friend's social networking sites. We can look through our friends' friends, photos, latest news...etc.No longer we have to meet up to have activities with our friends. We can have play a game of scrabble, of dungeons and dragon, challenge each others' high scores in addictive games such as icy towers.

Let's take a look at today's social networking:



Some of the more prominent social networking sites are Facebook and MySpace. Currently there is strong heated competition between these social networking sites. Check out this video:



Other than competition between Social Media network, there have also been debate on the effectiveness of social networking. 2  factors paved the ways for opposers towards social networking.

1. Communication through social network is inefficient: long winded and interpersonal heart-to-heart talk should be done using emails. social networking sites has no privacy and easily accessed by others.
2. Social Networks lose engagement over time: it get's boring after a while, it happened to Friendster and MySpace, it will happen to Facebook too. 

On a personal note,  Facebook happens to be my first social networking site. Till today, it is still as interesting as first day. What we connect is people, not applications. If people gets bored with social networking, they are probably bored at social relationships with people real-life.