You’ve heard the constant buzz surrounding this hot topic. Everybody is talking about it, or is a part of it, businesses want to use it, but you are just stuck with the same pressing question—what the hell is social networking? Well first, calm down. If you don’t know what it is, you may feel like you’re missing out on something big that you should be a part of. Yes, it is big. Yes, you should be a part of it. But you don’t have to miss out.
This phenomena is simply using the Web to connect with people, many of whom you meet exclusively through the Web by having shared interests or through others you already know. Many websites that you’ve heard of are social networking site—Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, and Twitter are probably the most popular. Each does something a little different, but basically each one allows people to share ideas and media with many people at once with little effort. Twitter, for example, allows you to send messages to everyone in your friends list, but only at 140 characters at a time. It’s a great way to let everyone know what you’re up to and for others to check up on you, but without a long phone call. Other sites like Blogger allow you to blog, put up posts of text as long as you want, so that you can expand upon ideas or comment on events and let anyone who’s interested join in on the conversation.
These activities may not seem like very much on the surface, but their power comes when many people are all communicating at once. You may only get 140 characters on Twitter, but you may get thirty messages a day. This makes you aware of what many people are doing very quickly. Furthermore, sites like Facebook and MySpace allow you to give and get a look out what other people are interested in and are up to any given day; very quickly. Your friends get to see what others are writing about you, and through this, new connections are made. When millions of people are doing this together, ideas and conversations spread out quickly.
The true strength of these technologies is the ability for users to pass along messages to others instantaneously. It’s like a game of telephone, expect there are thousands of people spread out all over the world and there’s no lag time between messages. These technologies are nothing to scoff at. Many recent news events have been reported first by people posting content to social networking websites and passing the word to others through these networks. Because they are so quick and don’t require much work to use, they are a great way to spread the word about anything, including historic moments.
So now you want to get on it? Great! It’s free to use any of these services. You don’t have to use them regularly, but when you do, you may find yourself connecting with distant relatives, old friends, and people you never met before, who have the same interests. Through this you can learn a lot, hopefully make a few business connections, and maybe even a few new friends as well. Tweet!
So follow me on twitter: @heckman
February 15th, 2010 at 12:37 am
I like your post.Most of the person uses networking sites like facebook,twitter, etc but they don’t know actually what networking is? So this post will make you understand the meaning of networking.