21st century is the millennium that witnessed a drastic evolution in the way we make new friends and network with people around us. It is the era of using the Internet to establish friendships and networks through social networking sites. Among the many social networking sites that could be found on the Internet, Facebook created by Mark Zuckerberg, a 27-year old American computer scientist, software developer and philanthropist, by far, is the most popular social networking site to date.
Facebook was initially created with the aim to connect students in American colleges and universities. However, its popularity was so overwhelming that it outshone other predecessors of social networking sites such as Friendster and My Space. Facebook has made it possible for many people including myself to connect with many people, especially with friends from my school, college and university days.
However, this also means users of Facebook have allowed themselves to be subjected to public scrutiny of their lives. It can be interesting to find out what our friends are up to with their lives but it can also provide the opportunity for ill-intentioned people to stalk and disturb their targeted victims. Thus, if most people are being "cyber-wise" users of the Internet, this could actually help to reduce the number of cyber crimes being committed on the Internet.
Having said this, jumping on the Facebook bandwagon proved to be an experience beyond what I have come to expect. It's actually both good and not so good where networking and friendshipping with people from all parts of the world are concerned. Good is that I get to connect with people I have wanted to connect, especially in the entertainment and media publishing industries. Not so good is that I attract perfect strangers, whom I think should be given the benefit of the doubt, for them to prove themselves worthy of being a friend.
To date, these perfect strangers I have befriended on Facebook have been good to me. Only that I wished I'm able to meet them face-to-face. I would still prefer face-to-face contact with all my Facebook friends if circumstances permit. Right now, I have yet to have the privillege to do so, but God willing I hope to meet them face-to-face some time in the near future.
To be able to interact with my friends face-to-face in my opinion would actually enhance the experience of "facebooking". And yeah, nothing beats the real and physical way of friendshipping and networking with all the friends I have made on Facebook.
Networking has been good and bad to me on the haul.Good - I've been able to connect even to 'strangers' who seem attracted to my profile picture or just mainly my profile, and secondly bad - I might have overspent my time with the internet as I could have exercised more on sports outdoors,as meeting people face to face outdoors is more REAL than pretending to save the world on the internet.
ReplyDeleteBut by carefully talking to strangers while protecting my stand, I managed to find true friends too as well as reliable,accountable friends who has a free spirit to respond, and I'm not talking to a blind wall instead...(most facebookers wanted to beautify their facebooks only without the intention of connecting verbally as in talking or chat).
I don't blame them because when I was young, my Mom asked me not to talk to strangers.But being a social networking hub, I find RedFm satisfying as I love to write and paste comments even if they do not respond.I understand that being a worker or employee,one's hand is used for the objective of their nature of work and probably their hands are not free to write(respond) or the opposite sex is scared that being different,might scare away the girlfriends in their social networking sites.
Thus, I find social networking exciting and worthwhile because I never had so much freedom in my life,but it is under control...