Thursday, May 22, 2008 Ng: Social networks By Wilson Ng Wired Desktop
ONE of the things I enjoy about being in the technology sector is learning new things. In the last few weeks, I have been going into overdrive trying to check out social networks that, they say, are the new applications that characterizes web 2.0.
While the first wave of the dot com era was characterized by the creation of a “brochure” website where people go to Internet to read news or learn something about a company through its “official” website, they now demand something more—they don’t want to be passive users of information, but want to interact and also contribute to the information.
Thus, blogs—where people can read and also voice their opinions—and networks, like friendster. com, facebook.com and forums—where people get raw information—grew more popular.
Web sites like Flickr and YouTube have grown immensely, because people want to post and share their own writings, their own photos, music and videos. If you note, this is also happening on television, in live shows where people interact and respond without any prepared scripts.
I was an early adopter of blogging, having started my blog four years ago.
However, I was late to the party of Friendster and YouTube, apparently two of the most popular networks in the country.
I have been logging into www.ecademy.com (this is a business network based in the UK) occasionally in the past few years, and have since made about over 150 friends in the network. I also started getting active in Facebook, which is the current favorite, and have amassed about 165 friends.
Facebook is currently considered the fastest growing social network and is said to already have over 60 million members.
If you are a businessman or a professional, www.linkedin.com would be more interesting. It does not have any frills, is very straightforward and does not have students or people who can be a nuisance. All it does is to keep information that you want to share with network members. I have about 270 contacts there.
I am also starting to look at YouTube. As somebody who would rather spend time reading than watching TV or movies, I am not very keen on YouTube. I also originally felt (although I later learned I was wrong) that since we can post video on our website, there is no point of posting it on YouTube. Well, I found out that there is a reason you post video on YouTube—it is where people go and look.
