The rage on the Internet today is all about social networks. Just recently there was a study on online activity and social networks topped the list. These are online communities of people who share common interests and activities. These sites provide the ability to create a personal profile and various ways to interact with other people, such as messaging, e-mail, video, text or voice chat, file sharing, blogging, and discussion groups. This concept has revolutionized the way many people communicate and share information with each another. These websites are used by millions of people everyday on a regular basis. For many people, online social networking has become a part of everyday life and has replaced things like email.
Social networks have become such deep parts of our lives I sometimes wonder if I would really be talking to some of the people in my own network if it wasn't for these services. Think about it, look at the friends you have. Have some of the people that are your friends on say Facebook people you haven't seen for years. For me that's the case. The thing I noticed the most is the fact that a majority of my friends are friends from high school and not many connections I have today.
So with social media what are some of the most popular ones to check out? Well here are some that you can try to see if they are ones you want to join:
Right now Facebook is the most popular with over 700 million users. People can add friends and send them messages and update their personal profile to notify friends about themselves. Facebook right now has a valuation of around $70 billion and has become even more popular with the movie the Social Network which was based around the founding of Facebook.
The second most popular one is Twitter.
Twitter allows you to share short messages (140 characters long) to your followers and allows you follow other Twitter users as well. This has become one of the greatest ways to quickly share information with others and only continues to grow in popularity.
A third one to check out is EarthTangle. This is a social network for those interested in environmental and social issues around the world. It easily allows you find friends around you and easily share your life with others.
So has online communications replaced offline communications? For some this may be the case as it is much easier to contact friends online than to go out and meet people. It should be interesting to see what happens and see how this evolves. Who knows maybe in five years there will be a better way to communicate and stay in touch with friends that everyone is using.
