Networked, Socially

  •   Tue, Mar 29 2011
  •   By Rohan Sequeira

March 30, 2011

Once, while travelling in the bus with my friend, I found a peculiar sight. A man was easing himself by the roadside while operating a mobile phone with one hand. I was quick to show this circus to my friend. His reply was apt, "He must be tweeting about his present activity."

I felt that was so typical of today’s generation, the Social Networking Generation. We want everyone to know what we are up to. The movie "The Social Network" won the Oscar for the best adapted screenplay at the 83rd Academy Awards ceremony 2011. It was surprising to many but not for those who know what a social network is.

Gone are the days when everyone met their friends and relatives only during festivals and celebrations. Then phones came in to the picture, which were used just to summarise the week or month to the person on the other side. The invasion of mobile phones increased the need for connectivity - with calls and SMS people would tell others whenever and whatever they wanted.

The emergence of social networks created a revolution in connectivity. Today every youngster asks the same question, "Are you on Facebook?" Popular social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, LinkedIn etc are changing the human fabric on the Internet. They all have one thing to say, 'Hot Today, Gone Tomorrow.'

Why should I be on the social network? A popular question by the 90’s generation. Let us take a simple example. You are in a new city and want to explore it. By going through the map you would come to know what places to visit. But does the map give you reviews by other people who had been to the sites? Certainly not.

Now, let us put the same situation differently. If you are in any social networking site you can just type the name of the place and you will get hundreds of reviews by previous visitors. That just makes your job easy and you save some bucks. The same example could be projected over other activities like buying books and booking movie tickets, reviews on food and drinks, travel, sports, career etc. One can even download music, pictures and research articles on these sites. The options are unlimited; you just have to be a member of any of these site. Companies like Adidas, Pepsi, and Puma make use of these sites to advertise, because a large number of the consumers are youth, who are active users of these sites.

There are millions of activities done over the social networking sites every hour. One can post one's photos, videos, comments, experiences and their current activities, all for free. It’s like you are enjoying a cup of coffee, and you tweet ‘the coffee at Star One Hotel is the best in town’. Within seconds you will get hundreds of comments and queries. It’s that simple and fast. Facebook has more than 600 million active users. It is   1vcsdbeing used for advertising, alerts and US$800 million is its current turnover.

In many ways, Facebook has had considerable impact on the social life and activity of people, especially with its ability to reunite lost family members and friends. One such reunion was between John Watson and his daughter - he had spent 20 years searching for his long-lost daughter in USA before finding her on Facebook.

YouTube is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos. There are13 Billion Videos on YouTube, 135.7 Million viewers approximately and these videos are in 34 languages. LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site 100 million users and its net worth is $1.85 million. Here you get firsthand experience of CEO’s and companies. You can even submit your resume and know about vacancy for jobs. Twitter is another social network site which is rapidly gaining familiarity, offering social networking and micro blogging service, enabling its users to send and read messages called tweets. There are over 50 million tweets uploaded per day. You can follow some of the famous personalities on Twitter and know about their schedule. The present day mobile phones have access for all these sites.

The need for connectivity has indeed become an inseparable part of this generation and in future it is going to become more and never less.

Modern day break up

Girl -  I want to break up.

Boy – Why?

Girl – Because you don’t comment on my snap in Facebook.

 

Rohan Sequeira - Archives: 
By Rohan Sequeira
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Comment on this article

  • JRAO,

    Thu, Mar 31 2011

    Social Networking as said is part and parcel of the day. The use of
    such network should be limited to the requirement and care should be taken that our daily productive time being not gone thru the drains
    and on the other hand too much of information will lead confusions.


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