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Social Networks At A Crossroads
mateuscb writes "A few years ago, social networking Web sites were just some newfangled technology that college students loved. But over time, they have metamorphosed into an unavoidable Internet phenomenon that is changing the way people of all ages keep in touch with friends, find long-lost acquaintances, explore new hobbies and even look for employment."
still haven't joined one. facebook, myspace, hi5... who cares. I know who my friends are.
..with the amount of employers looking through social network sites for information on employees...surely that should be "and even look for unemployment"?
I'm surprised linkedin wasn't mentioned. It's getting a lot of use by the professional social networking crowd.
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
They're completely easily avoidable. Whenever I get sent a link to one, I reply with a link to http://isolatr.com/. People soon get the idea.
It does make sense that online community sites/networks rock. I was never interested into these until this year. I tried Facebook. I'm not advertising facebook, BTW. It's just interactive. Since I don't have time (like most of you) to talk to friends in real life, and to offer them gifts or to poke them (yeah, try poking people in real life and you end up with police chasing you lol), I do it virtually. Most people find it easier to meet others online than in real life. How many hours do you spend procrastinating around on internet messengers or IRC channels, just for the sake of 'talking' to friends? Well, Online Community Networks is way cooler, interactive, and more importantly, you can find people you've lost. Had a girlfriend/boyfriend in high school whom you lost? Find him/her online. I guess online community networks are part of our lives (a bit like /.) - we wake up, check our emails, go there to check messages, poke people, send gifts, update our profile page and status, feed our virtual pets, send messages, etc all in a matter of minutes, and it does not tax on our real life schedules. Viva Facebook and others. I'm just sad that Yahoo can't turn 360 into something really cool. With Yahoo messenger backing it up, maybe it can.
The privacy issue sucks though - example: Facebook profiles are being indexed by search engines (unless you edit your privacy settings). hmm..just a thought here, if Ajax write or the entire google docs, spreadsheet, etc is integrated into Facebook (because it's 'open'), can it be viewed as a true web OS? (don't want to go off-topic, but it's related - since when being viewed as a web OS, more people get interested into it)
Do I require the c-sig package to have a signature?
I don't mean to sound like a Troll.. but gotta love those press junkies! That article smacks of a public relations exercise by YUNiTi. I've been approached many many times by people 'offering' to manage our public exposure.. by releasing various stories, even negative ones, to increase the sites exposure. We've even had stories sent to us 'about our site' and placed into comparison with myspace and facebook, that pitched in exactly the same way as this story - and for us to have it released to the major publications / sites would ONLY cost $X per release. Give us back proper journalism!
I remember when imeem launched its peer to peer social networking gizmo they made a great deal about the fine grained privacy settings that could be applied to everything that you were connected to, but over time they've reduced the ability of users to protect things, shifted everything from the software client to a website only, and morphed into something like 'Youtube for music'
The new imeem is way cooler.
Why is the users of these sites believe they have stumbled across some "unavoidable phenomenon"? It sounds to me like a self-justifying phenomenon (or, more precisely, a phenomenon of self-justification).
And here's the part I *don't* get -- all the comments from people saying "I don't have time to keep up with friends and family, but since I joined {Facebook/Myspace/etc} we can keep in touch and make new friends..." WTF? Maybe if you peeled your fat ass away from the computer and spent time with family and friends and maybe got involved with some activities you could make new friends.
Maybe its just Wall Street greed coupled with the myopia of 20 somethings.
A few years ago, social networking Web sites were just some newfangled technology that college students loved
...Whereas now, the first round of those original college kids have graduated and some haven't yet moved on; additionally,
their younger siblings have started using these services to get a head start on the Cool New Thing(tm). Woo-woo.
But over time, they have metamorphosed into an unavoidable Internet phenomenon
I'd call this a sad commentary on the steadily advancing age-of-first-real-job, not an "internet phenomenon". YMMV. In any case, I've managed to avoid them quite well, thankyouverymuch.
changing the way people of all ages keep in touch with friends
No, not really. The afforementioned "college kids who haven't moved on yet" use it to keep in touch. The rest of us still use the phone or email or, wonder-of-wonders, physically meeting one another.
and even look for employment.
"Look". Not "find".
These folks have a rather rude awakening to look forward to... The rest of the world really doesn't give two shakes of a rat's ass about their pathetic little ego-pages. It doesn't care about their blogs, their favorite bands, their pictures of their cat/dog/iguana/fish-named-bob.
Your future employer doesn't care about Bob-the-fish. He cares that you have the ability to work, in person, with others, and get the job done. The fact that you can't differentiate between "friends" and "people you've never met but add to a counter on your website" doesn't really help with that.
Social networking sites seem to me to be kind of over. A few years ago I was active on a few of them; Tribe and Nerve were fun. But the fun sites are over. Myspace is just the new AOL.
Phone-based social networking is probably where things are going. Although, interestingly, the iPhone doesn't have social networking. Helio does, but nobody uses Helio.
The rate of growth for most of the social networking sites peaked in late 2006, almost a year ago. The referenced article is a reverberation of the inflection point.
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme/?entry=social_networking_meme_verified
I predicted MySpace's peak in growth early in 2006, almost coincident to when it occurred. The introduction of Facebook's third party API is a sign of an industry entering a consolidated and standardization phase.
Through a decade of technological "progress" the Internet self-important-erati have slowly been inventing the equivalent of the venerable BBS. What's worse, those who arrived to the party late actually think they've created something new that hasn't been done before.
It's both amusing and frustrating to see the BBS spoken of as a technology of yesteryear, while mainstream Internet culture gets closer and closer to being an exact duplicate of BBS culture. Strip away all of the fancy buzzwords and you've basically got the same thing: people connecting to each other online.
As a BBS sysop of nearly 20 years (please visit us online!) I can say with certainty that nothing has changed. Everything old is new again. And may I say to the "Web 2.0" and "social network" people: you didn't invent it.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!