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Building Relationships in an Online SocietyBY: Diane | Category: Technology | Post Date: 2010-02-04
How many friends do you have? No, I'm not talking about people who you hang out with; I'm talking about your Facebook page. Chances are that that number of people you hang out with is drastically lower than the people tagged as friends on your social networking sites. In a way, this is the purpose of these sites: to enable you to keep in contact with people whom you otherwise wouldn't be able to. The cause of difficulty in keeping up the relationship varies. You could have differing schedules. You might live in different parts of the world. In all honesty, you might not even like the person. But on Facebook and other social network sites, they are your 'friends.' You know the phrase 'keep your friends close, but your enemies closer'? Perhaps social networking sites are helping our society do just that. By creating links to everyone you know - those you like and those you don't - you are giving yourself access to information that can help you in the long run. In theory you can find a job easier, sell things, make more friends, and pretty much advance your agenda. Recently, I had one 'friend' post a status update asking everyone to vote for the Doritos commercial that she and some friends (real, in-the-flesh friends) submitted. Since having her join my Facebook page over two years ago, we haven't had even one interaction one-on-one - electronic or otherwise. As the number of linkages and friendships grow on these social networking sites, the values of the sites diminish. This may seem anti-intuitive at first; the goal of those sites is to connect with friends. But when you connect with so many people that your only interaction with them is through mass messaging, the relationship has a chance of getting lost. Instead of logging onto a shared web site (or web sites if you are using MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, et cetera), you could theoretically just start a blog. This would open up your information to the world, but if you connect yourself to so many people in the first place, you are essentially doing so already. My moment of realization occurred one day when I visited my mother-in-law's house. There, I was introduced to my brother-in-law's friend. As we began chatting, I mentioned something about my work. He cut me off mid-sentence and said, 'I know,' and then proceeded to tell me the story I was trying to tell him. For a moment, I was completely flustered. Although I am known for retelling stories (there's a reason that my nickname is 'Babbling Brooke'), I had never met this person before. He quickly explained that he had read about it on my MySpace page. That evening, I went home and changed the security settings so that only people I approved could see my page. A friend (real and online) once posted a quote on her Facebook status: 'Only put things online if you would have it published on the front page of the New York Times.' This hyperbole is actually pretty close to the truth. With web sites that can pull up pages that were posted even for a few minutes, and friends of friends of friends of friends able to see your information on social networking sites and blogs, there are many opportunities for inadvertent dissemination of personal information. One way to help reign in your impulse to expose yourself online is to make in-person friendships your priority and supplement them as necessary using the internet. Article Source: http://www.writearticles.org About Author / Additional Info: Additional Articles: * Teaching your Kids How to Spend and Save Wisely * Shopping For My Christmas Tree * What causes fever * Luxury villa to rent in Sorrento Coast, Italy * Barbados Villas Does this article violate or infringe on your copyright ? It is a violation of our terms for authors to submit content which they did not write and claim it as their own. If this article infringes on your copyrights, then use our Contact us form with the detailed proof of infringement along with the offending article's title, URL and writer name. If you do not hear back from us then contact us again in another 10 days. Thank you. Comments on this article: (0 comments so far) * Additional comments are now closed for this article *
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