Today, when we say Social Networking Site the first thing that comes to mind is Facebook and if you get asked to name some other social networking media, if you are my age you would probably say MySpace and Hi5. But Social Networking media has been around for more than that!Shifting
I had started using the Internet when I was about 12 to 13 years old and at that time I remember having mIRC, where you could have your own channel and you and your group of friends could log in and chat, share photos, plan to meet up and do the same basic stuff we do today on Facebook. Sure you didn't have profiles, albums, likes, etc... but you get the picture!
Then all of a sudden it seemed to have died down and all of my friends were moving on to MSN messenger, but why?
You could do the same things in mIRC, we chatted, exchanged photos and stuff and what not but in my opinion, MSN messenger added privacy! You received requests from other users to chat with you for the first time, whereas in mIRC you could log into a channel and there would be loads of people you didn't know. I remember the first thing we used to say to a person on mIRC was 'ASL?' which translated into Age Sex Location?
With MSN messenger you could know who that person was as everyone had a Profile and this was the golden ticket which made everyone shift. Now you could have albums with pictures of you and your friends, and other people who were on your Friends list could leave comments on them.
This is the reason why there is always something new, if its not MySpace, it's Hi5, but why? Why does the crowd occasionally shift?
It all boils down to who has the most competitive edge. Some new guy will eventually turn up with a new feature which no one else has thought of yet and steels the spotlight.
Why has Facebook grown so much
If you stop for a while and look at what Facebook is doing, you'll notice that its constantly introducing innovative ideas.
First it had the 'Like' button, mutual friends and the photo tag, then it incorporated the instant messaging service within the site its self, video chat, groups, fan pages, maps which record all the locations you were at, multi-player games which display scoreboards made out of your friends and most lately the Timeline profile which illustrates your activity across the years.
This constant introduction of new features helped keep Facebook at the top for so long now, but don't think for a moment that its guaranteed to stay there forever. Every beginning has its end and within a few years time we would laugh and ask ourselves why Facebook?
The Dark Side
Unfortunately, social networking has its drawbacks, the first which come to mind are; Addiction and Stalking.
Its true that social networking makes us feel more connected to our friends and family, but is it worth spending 6.7 billion hours on social networking sites? That's the amount of hours spent on October 2011 alone.
According to an article issued on April 2011 by The Guardian cyber-stalking is now more common than physical harassment and that almost 40% of the victims are males.
Conclusion
I just want to conclude with this interesting infographic which illustrates the growth of social networking and how it is effecting our productivity.
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