As one becomes familiar with social network sites, it’s not surprising to see the same trends I do; one is that you can easily become more familiar with people you’ve never met in real life versus those you’ve known for years, and two is that you find yourself talking virtually with real life (and non-real life)friends as opposed to seeing them socially.
Having gone through a birthday yesterday, I find it not at all surprising that I only had two calls to wish me happy birthday, one call that called for something else but since I was on the phone wished me one, and one email, yet I received eight Facebook wall posts saying the same, three of which are people I have never met face to face.
To one degree you want to consider social networks as the greatest time sink yet with the highest level of feeling like you accomplished something, whether that be because you talked about something related to your job, made plans for the weekend or whatever. To another, it detracts from the real value of the internet as far as it’s purchasing power, educational value and communication medium; after all, there are only so many quiz’s you can take and polls you can vote on before your down to the worthless end of them, taking polls on which book character you are most similar to and what is your most likely favorite alcoholic beverage.
I have recently come back in contact with high school buddies I probably would never have otherwise, as I no longer had a valid phone number, address or email (friend search ftw). Chalk one up for social networking popularity. At the same time however, I probably spend three or more hours a day playing MouseHunt, browsing books on LivingSocial, reading news on Mixx, stumbling along at StumbleUpon, Twittering, using Facebook, and via my iPhone in the restroom, watching YouTube videos. Chalk one up in the loss column. Are those really productive uses of time?
With the WhiteHouse blog, celebrity Twitter wars (go Britney), and everything else we find entertaining these days you can rest assured social networks are only on the rise and not decline. My question is: is that a good thing or bad?
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