How compelling are social networking sites?! I mean I can understand that it helps to keep in touch, you get to know who’s birthday is coming up, who has moved from which city to another, who has just got married, who just got a baby and blah blah blah.
I have an account in Orkut which I rarely ever use and one in Facebook which I visit once in a week and so I am labelled a dork for having such low net visibility!
I was taken aback when I went to Facebook today and saw that a friend had posted “gave birth today and we are all fine”, along with photos of the baby! One I didn’t realise it was safe to take pictures of such a young baby, guess the doctor would have okay-ed it! Two what was the tearing hurry to announce it on the very same day on The NET?!!
Don’t get me wrong I am happy to see the news and I sent in my wishes as well but realistically I would have thought that she would have been too tired and too happy to have given a thought to anything else. Clearly I was wrong!
I guess where earlier people would have run for their mobiles or the nearest telephone to phone up those who matter and inform, today people run to the nearest net kiosk to publish the news – perhaps an easier way to reach a whole lot more at one go!
As of March 2010, Facebook traffic made up 41% of all traffic on a list of popular social destinations. MySpace was in second place, capturing 24% of traffic. Gmail had 15%, and Twitter had 8%. [Source – Socialnetworkingwatch.com]
Interestingly however, today the net edition of ibnlive.com carries a video article right on the front page on social networking risks and the guy on the video says, you put out your address on the net and then tweet saying going out of city on vacation for two weeks. You are then happily putting out an invitation for robbers….and its as simple as that.
I don’t prescribe to paranoia and I wont deny the happiness of finding long lost friends and being able to chat up but I would say that social networking sites are a MEANS to an end and not the END in itself.
What say?
P.s - a special mention on my friends blog http://doctorforcure.blogspot.com/. A blog on health tips. We live in an era of information overload so much so that you google for a headache you get a whole lot of text on the why’s, the how’s, the when’s, the types….and the list continues…..i like this blog because its short, to the point and its her personal experience not some researched or referenced gibberish. Hetal, I hope I’ll get to see a whole lot of informative blogs on it and hey please respond to comments :)
:) kya baat hai neeta.. i think ur observation is quite good. it is not safe to click pic of kid if ur flash is on. It mite cause permanenet damage to kid's eyes. well abt hurry to post it.. in my family i saw my sister-in-law didnt get up from bed after delivering my niece, for almost a week despite of normal delivery. New moms are very weak and need to take a lot of rest thats what all aunties do insist ;). but i think newer moms are all alone and they get hooked to internet. in older times or in rather joint families there are so many people around you that u never feel the urge to reach out to people in totally different geographical location and inform them about your new born who they might never meet in their lives :D
ReplyDeletehey... u know facebook would have been the third populated country if it would have been a country.. thatz the growth facebook is seeing
ReplyDeleteHetal my friend and wife had both their families present there in the hospital but i guess despite that they wanted to reach out to their friends or whomever. Anyways to each his own!
ReplyDeleteKalyan, your absolutely right, facebook would be a third country in itself, but then i wonder which religion it would follow - here for friends, for networking, for dating, for catching up? :)
Ha ha ha.. we indians really want to define religion abt everything.. well i think one more option for religion will be eager to share news, very eager to share news and jumping to share news :D
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