Online Social Networking...

The word Network is defined as, a group or system of interconnected people or things but never imagined that people and things together. With the invention of Internet we proved that the machines from any where can connect and talk to each other. In this rapid electronic age, even humans decided it's best to talk to each other using the machines we created, thus a beautiful world of Online Social Networking (OSN) came to life.

Your popularity is derived from the online noise from these OSN sites. You could be having a great social life with out having to get out of your own bed room (reminds me of an SNL show). Just think about it. How convenient is that right? You don't have the pressure of wearing good clothes, deodorants/perfumes, sense of humor, nice hairdos and so on. To start all you need is a crazy nick name, best picture and a catchy tag line. Then you start inviting all the real people you know and over time add all the strange people you would normally never hoped to meet.

If you meet some one for the first time in real life, it's wrong to ask their age, their telephone number, birthday and other details they shared with their friends. It's considered rude and invasion of their privacy. How convenient in this OSN, you get all those details with out even asking.

Funny thing is you have a lot to talk about online everyday to everybody (let's call it the Buddy List). If you happen to meet some one for real then you search for words, have nothing more to say to their face other than, "I will write on your wall later". Writing on their wall (when did graffiti become socially accepted gesture) but not much to say to their face! This is the sort of living making us call some one in the hope that we get to their answering machine first. What is causing this unsocial behavior in the name of social networking?

On the other hand, there is a lot of pressure if someone finds out that you are not a member of atleast one of Yahoo, Google, Myspace, Orkut, Facebook, Bebo, Twitter, Hi5, Friendster, Multiply and so on. Even as a professional, you resort to LinkedIn, Plaxo etc. If you observed the social networking sites constantly looking to attract you with a catchy name such as Multiply (what are we rabbits now?), Twitter (and birds?).

I predict humans will eventually stop interacting completely and start with just machines, unless the machines (robots) already are on a head start. That way we can find the buddies of our liking and no pressure of meeting them in a party or in a super market.

Yes shamelessly, I am not only a hypocrite but also a victim of peer pressure. I will defer to the privacy issues of OSN in another blog. Write on my wall below!