Social Networking

Has social networking taken over our lives and replaced face to face communication?  While some believe that it has, I believe that it has only supplemented face to face communication.  Let me know what you all think in the comment section.  I doubt that I'll get very many comments, but I suppose that you never know.

Back to the subject at hand, though.  There are many different types of social networking sites.  There are blogging sites, which are considered by some to be social networking.  Blogger, Word Press, and Xanga.  This blog uses the Blogger platform.  It is one of the two most common platforms for blogging.  Word Press is the other one.

There are plain social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and the site that is credited with starting the social networking revolution: Friendster.  These sites allow one to micro-blog, post videos, photos, notes, and bookmarks.  They are the most popular of the different types of social networking sites.

In terms of micro-blogging by itself, there is really only one big player in the game: Twitter.  Twitter is an extremely basic service that allows one to post 140 character max messages to their followers.  It also allows people to follow other people's tweets.  A tweet is what they call a message.  Oprah, Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Shaq, Ron Paul, and Sarah Palin are some notable Tweeters.

Online bookmarking has become popular as more people use more than one computer per day.  People have their computer at home and then many people use a computer at work or school and need to have their bookmarks easily accessible.  The bookmarks are put online and then they can access them from any web enabled computer.  Del.icio.us, Bebo, StumbleUpon, Y! Bookmarks and Bebo are some of the most popular sites to use.

There are also sites where people can create 'user generated news'.  This means that people write the stories and put them up onto the site.  People generally post impartial things like actual news that happens around them.  It goes up onto the general site and stays there for a minute or two before it goes into their page. Reddit, Digg, and Buzz by Yahoo are some of those.