Social networking has been around for quite some time now, and there are a plethora of sites and services that you can get into depending on your age, your friends and what interests you.
I have written before about how difficult it is to have family and friends try something outside of the ordinary. Most especially with technology, people tend to stick with the familiar, leaving the task of early adoption to people who are interested in them such as myself.
The biggest benefit I have found in using these types of services is what they actually do… connecting people. I remember when Kitchie surprised me on my 30th birthday. There was this one college friend of mine that I haven’t seen in ages, and I recently just found him through one of these sites. She got hold of him through there, and to make the story short, he was able to celebrate with us.
There are even more friends that I lost contact with, going way back to our elementary school days, but this technology made it all possible for us to get in touch. And although I myself have yet to be able to attend, there have been a number of social gatherings between old friends and schoolmates, all organized through social networks, email and text messages.
Unfortunately, no matter how great a new service is, you will still have the trouble of getting your friends and family to join, before it can actually be of any use. I myself have been in Facebook during the time they opened to the public, but until now, most of the people I know are still stuck with Friendster… where everybody else is.
But no matter what service or platform you use, until there is actually a universal applicaition to put it all together, it will all still be like in real life. People of the same interests group together.
Image courtesy of IQDC.