Social Networking in the Digital Age

An anonymous reader writes "It used to be if you wanted to win more friends, influence more people or make more money, you bought one of those self-improvement tomes and tried to pump up your personality. These days, all you have to do is go online and join a "social networking" site. The pumping will be done for you."

Comments

Social Networking that is more than just dating?

[thened]

I help run a website that has social networking aspects, Mediachest.com and have looked around at all the other social networking sites, and they don't really seem to offer much. They either try to replace existing communities with a site that has fewer features than the original or they are worthless, slow lists of people who are essentially strangers. Sure, it is nice if you want to look at profiles of girls without having to pay to contact them, but are any of the sites any more useful than that? Mediachest is more about finding new people and sharing items. It is like the distributed library project but centralized so it is easier to find things. Social networking can be very valuable when trying to find a DVD to watch or a book to borrow. Social networking can be more than just dating.

Yeah, but how accurate are the numbers?

[The Angry Mick]

While I see some great potential for these types of sites, I have to wonder about the strength or veracity of the social networks they claim to foster. For example, Orkut tells me I'm now "connected" to over 150,000 folks, even though I only have three "friends" added to my profile. Just because I joined to the Debian/Apache/PHP/EFF/Dachshund forums doesn't mean all the other members even know of my existence, or care.

Still though, it does do wonders for the ego . . .

Re:Why I don't believe in this

[Sloppy]

Many still prefer human face to face (or any other body part to any other body part ;) ) contact to the virtual impersonal environment of cyberspace.

Yes, but the virtual impersonal environment can be an icebreaker, when people are shy or otherwise don't talk as much as they should.

There was a girl I often saw at local metal shows, but we just didn't talk much, and when we did, the conversations were pretty short. But she mentioned one of these 'social network' sites (a really cheezy and unreliable one too) and out of curiosity I checked it out, "friended" her, and started making journal entries with comments about various local metal shows. So did she. Then we started commenting on each other's journals. We got to know each other better in these "batch mode " communications, and that carried over to when we are in person.

Not dating or anything like that (nor do I expect that to happen, we'd be pretty incompatible, I think -- though she does happen to be a pretty hot babe :-) but now we're a lot more familiar and friendly. One of these dumb sites turned a near-stranger into a friendly acquaintance. I like that! It makes me want everyone in my local metal scene to get on that cheezy website.

Ultimately, these things are just another tool, which can be used stupidly or smartly. But having more tools for communication is better, especially given how socially disfunctional people are these days... Ok, maybe the disfunction is a consequence of all the other tools. (e.g. people using computers instead of talking face-to-face) But the computers are not going away, and the people are not getting any less fucked-up, so you might as well use and leverage the tools.

Identity theft. You can register yourself as Bill Gates, with BG's photo, on Friendster. Chances are, you'll get away with it.

I think you have a damned good point there. AFAIK, except for celebrities, the potential doesn't seem to be getting abused much, but it's certainly possible. Obviously these networks should be integrated with the PGP WoT. ;-)

Actually, that would a good challenge for me: Can I explain the PGP WoT to my new non-hacker, Windows98-using, 18-year-old-metal-chick friend? Hmmm...