Thursday, November 12, 2009

Response to article 11/12

Facebook, myspace, and twitter websites, and things like them have in fact become a part of the everyday lives of many people. I myself can't imagine going over two days without checking facebook or updating my status. It is kind of weird to think about. Also, I thought it was right on when they said that these social networking sites are a way of letting strangers interact based on things they have in common etc. I always thought they were called social networking sites, not social network sites. But, it is true that the main use of these sites isn't to mae connections between strangers, most of the time that is avoided as to not endanger oneself. Facebook is exactly a prime example of the definition they gave. With facebook you are talking and communicating in many ways with people ALREADY in your social network, i.e your friends and family. I did notice that they say that some sites have been found to have people segregating themselves with race, age, sex, etc. I guess that is true, but these sites also do bring every one together. I never knew that some of the first social networking sites were things like dating sites and classmates.com. I remember some of the old stuff like Livejournal and Xanga. It is amazing to see that we grew up with this kind of stuff. I remember my first computer and screen name for AIM. I was probably 8 years old. Our parents and even people just a bit older than us had to learn all about this stuff, but for us we grew up with it. It is everwhere now and we would be clueless if we didn't know about it. Faksters is something that is still a big problem. I was just listening to the radio when a music artist was saying how her twitter account wasn't certified yet and someone was pretending to be her. THey were starting rumors and talking to other celebrities as her and making an all out mess. My parents always told me never to give out too much information on an social networking site becuase you never know if people are who they say they are. Turns out, that now my parents even have facebooks. But, it has helped them get back in touch with a lot of people they haven't talked to or seen in years and I think that is pretty cool, except for the fact that my mom might have a more serious facebook addiction than even myself. Myspace was my first glimpse of a social networking site and it is amazing to see how far things have come since then. Myspace is barely spoken of now because Facebook has just completely taken over. Myspace did allow you to personalize your page, which I like better than the lame facebook design. That was something that got users more familiar with html code and such. It was a great learning tool.

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