Monday, February 14, 2011

Online social networks


The most popular online social network website


The first website that comes to everyones mind when they first hear online social networks is Facebook. Everyone in the world spends infinite amount of time on the internet, and the worst source of procrastination is Facebook. They spends hours on the website without even realizing the time whooshing by when they should be working on other more important things, such as writing blog posts on Qatar Culture Club! One way of explaining the phenomenon of Facebook is through the interaction theory as there are different groups of individuals coming together, sharing their experiences and culture with the friends added to their profile. Facebook is not the first website that began to fulfill this purpose, there are other online social networks that were online before Facebook even started. Who could forget Myspace, people still use it( just not as much as before), or Hi5 or Bebo, there were many different website that used to bring people together but Facebook is probably the most successful one at doing so.


I always thought the site One of the first social
was called HiS when i was younger network sites I joined






The new design of what was formerly Myspace is now My____. Perhaps it was altered to attract more people to join and stay on their website.












People are attracted to online forms of socializing because they all belong to their own social networks and it is easiest to keep themselves updated by using the internet. Lets go back to Facebook, where you can create different lists where you divide people on your friends list to the different social networks you belong to, such as having different options for family than those compared to high school friends or new acquaintances.

Online social networks are not merely used for entertainment, they can also be used for infotainment (meaning information and entertainment, as i learnt in a recent class). Through new or old acquaintances there could be useful connectors who would be useful for future reference. Theres always that one person on our list who seems to have an opinion on everything and ,as annoying as that might be sometimes, it is useful to have opinion leaders in your circle or friends so that you could have them share their expertise of knowledge about cultural products.