People need social contacts. Right now we have to physically go somewhere to meet people socially. But suppose Internet-based social networking evolves to a point where everyone you know has a profile page with an integrated skype video account and a connection quality that enables a decent face-to-face conversation. Will that be a good enough substitute for water-cooler conversations (or beer talk, if you prefer)?
Right now physical social contact is often secondary to the online social networking activity. If you can chat with your friends online, you're not limited to the people you happen to run into that day. Third generation social-networking technology -- which is integrating such features as video, VOIP, instant messaging, and peer-to-peer systems -- is giving us more ways to supplement our real-life interactions with virtual ones.
Now, with the Internet and social networking sites, it's a breeze to trace back old acquaintances. I've recently joined a social networking site where I've reconnected with several people that I haven't had contact with for decades. I reunited with friends from my high school days, buddies from the (then mandatory) military service, and even my best friend from elementary school that I somehow lost contact with at age 17 or so.
There's an interesting corollary to this: Half a century ago, most people stayed their whole lives in the place where they were born, and social circles were fairly constant. While this still may be the case for many people, there’s a growing segment of the world's population (I'm guessing the majority of IE readers) that changes habitats in the blink of an eye.
The flipside is that you invariably also leave friends behind each time you move. Even though you vow to “stay in touch,” after a couple of emails it fades to an annual Christmas card before dying out entirely at the next address change.
Imagine having on your social network site a list of all of the people that were your friends at some point in your life, people that have been part of your life, now available just a mouse click away. With Social Network 3.0 -- which integrates capability for decent face-to-face conversations -- you can choose who you wish to share things with.
Whether you get that homesick feeling, or you’re just frustrated about how things are so backward in the sinkhole that is you're current residence, you can chat with that former colleague who's lived in half a dozen countries himself. Or if something reminds you of a vacation trip you made with your high school friends, you just call (or click?) them up whenever they're online, to bring back memories.
It's great fun to reconnect with long-lost friends, to learn what's become of them, or to see pictures of them and their families. With email, my experience is that this connection peters out after the initial exchange. With social networks, you don’t have to lose track of people -- you can contact them whenever you want.
I visited USA in 2000, and i called my parents once in two weeks, and was so happy if I could check my email 3 times a week. and now I talk to my dear and near every day and just follow their status in facebook.
I think online social networks enhance our social lives if
used effectively.Obviously, there are
folks who add virtually anyone to their online social networks without really
knowing the person thus, not adding any real value to one’s social network.
On the other hand, it can be a great tool to
keep in touch with people that you have met especially those from your past.I am currently enjoying getting back in touch
with my classmates from high school on Facebook.
I need to post some clarifications here, some nuances that got 'lost in translation' (thanks, though, James, for taking my sketchy writing and editing it into a publishable blog post). My original title was whether social networking would change our social lives, not 'replace'.
Our social contacts can roughly be categorized in three types:
1: The people we live with, spouse, children, parents,...
2: The people we happen to run into during our daily or regular activities: at work, school, in the gym, our neighbors, or even at the weight watchers or the AA.
3: The friends and relatives that we don't run into on a daily basis, for which we have to do an effort to visit. Those are the people we have 'true bonds' with, as Tara described, and I agree fully that we need to keep doing those efforts.
(I want to skip over people, strangers, we 'meet' online and start interacting with, as this is an entirely different category)
The premise that I wanted to state is that category 2 is probably by time the largest fraction of our social contact, even though the social contact is secondary to the activity itself: we first pick a job, a school, a place to live or an extracurricular activity, and then we end up interacting with a limited population of people, from which we pick some with whom we choose to interact on a deeper personal level.
As you move around to different cities, states or even countries, there's only a limited number of people you can keep in category 3, as much as you would like to 'keep in touch' with more. And this is not a choice of continuing or ending a friendship, but a hard limitation imposed by the amount of time we can spend on maintaining those contacts. And I'm talking from experience here: first you'd like to plan a trip to see your direct relatives (parents, siblings) at least once a year, then even for friends that live closer you need to plan ahead, get a babysit, etc.
The point I was trying to make is that if all of the friends we have collected on our way through life are only a mouseclick away (and I agree that the quality of experience currently is lacking), we can have casual conversations with any one of them when we see they're online, without any logistic planning. I would not see that as a substitute for any of the three categories, but as an opportunity to keep more people in category 3.
I find it very early in the social networking game for people to already worry about it replacing human interaction. Sure, today I can have a catch-up conversation with a pal from years ago but tomorrow, am I going to want to continue the friendship? Usually when you no longer speak regularily or semi-regularily to a person, there is a reason behind it. I know people look to blame external factors (it could never be YOU!); like distance, time, etc. but these are excuses. True bonds aren't broken by distance or time. Before social networks people were free to let weak ties die, now they can't escape them. For a society so comsumed by time and the lack thereof, I find it surprising that people want to use those precious free moments to re-establish weak ties rather than grow the relationships they have with their nearest and dearest. And where is all this time to do this coming from? I thought we didn't have any?
Online Social Networks are there to stay in our lives; and it is true that there are tremendous benefits in using them. You can connect and re-connect with people around the world and keep in touch with your beloved ones. However, there are many things that can not be done through online social networks, and sometimes we need to meet people for a face-to-face interaction to keep (the warm) of our relashionships.
Also relying only on online social networks to communicate with relatives and parents could impact negatively our family (social) life. Therefore, We should be aware not to limit our social lives to online social interactions even with the avent of a Social Network 3.0.
I agree that online networks should not replace our social lives, but more and more I am finding out that people are looking for mates and friends online instead of the tradional meeting places.
Being away from my home country I can still communicate with my parents and friends (not to mention about my spouse). A friend of mine who used to be a Fulbright student in 90s told me she used to call her husband once a week (OMG) and write letters..I cannot even imagine how they "survived". Thanks God (and everybody else who participated in Skype creation) it's totally different now!
Online social networks will not (or should not) replace our social lives; they will (or should) help to build and grow them. Interactions within the online world are important. The online world is the new water cooler of our interconnected universe. This new world or online water cooler can help to share and grow awareness more quickly than chat around the traditional ones.
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Using electronic stamps on email as a way to filter out spam or, at least cut down on unsolicited commercial email, has been considered by experts for some time now. Whether the discussion is raised in an email hoax or a serious proposal by a fellow ThinkerNetter, a practical solution is currently lacking. But what if the stamp charge is not collected by the government or ISP, but paid to the email recipient? The benefits there could be sufficient motivation to explore possible implementations.
Should we expect the same level of reliability in Internet service as we're used to in telephony and television? Surprisingly, we don't. We meekly accept frequent Internet service outages and faulty software. But as the line between telephony and Internet becomes thinner, more effort should be put into making Internet service as reliable as telephony used to be.
Internet traffic has been roughly doubling every year. As we know, this has created huge demand for network capacity. During the notorious telecom investment bubble, venture capital and R&D created a huge oversupply of network capacity. But was all that investment really lost? And what of the technologies created -- can we ever use them? I think we will soon learn that important optical networking technologies will be crucial to the evolution of the Internet. They just happened to have come a little bit early.
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While Google introduces its new Chrome OS (which I'm hearing will be widely available in one year? Did I mishear that?), IBM announced 10 new products today to help companies using IBM System z mainframe technology.
Smarter Collaboration: How to Thrive in a Challenging Business Environment Market conditions are changing faster than ever, and organizations need to improve their agility and adaptability in order to provide better service and improve processes. The ability to work with customers, business partners, and employees as effectively as possible - while at the same time holding down costs - is a key to success. READ THIS eBOOK
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When Reiter gets incensed over incompetent Verizon FiOS order-taking and support, he broadcasts it via Twitter. Did it do any good? How should your company offer Twitter support? Watch this for all the answers.
Evidence shows that you can tweet too much. Sites and services like Twitter and Facebook are a good place to reach your audience, but think quality over quantity.
A digital content market is emerging. Only two things are known about it: the first is that at some point the Internet will primarily become a paid network. The second known factor is that there are innumerable variables in the digital content market that have yet to be worked out. It’s not known, for example, exactly how users will pay for content (micropayments, subscriptions, bartering of farm animals, other).
The Google backlash continues. After seeing their Project 10^100 submissions disappear into the bowels of a Google server farm, a group of irate developers has started their own site to re-collect and vote on the ideas.
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The US loses about $20 billion a year on pirated software, movies, and music. But public policy can help stem the tide of digital theft. For example, France has recently passed a 'three strikes and you’re out' law, whereby if after two warning letters an individual continues to download pirated software then his Internet access will be cut off. US policy makers should consider adopting similar policies.
Financial management planning does not need to include Voodoo economics, but it does help to tap into the knowledge base of your team through some sort of real-time system. We explore your options.
When Reiter gets incensed over incompetent Verizon FiOS order-taking and support, he broadcasts it via Twitter. Did it do any good? How should your company offer Twitter support? Watch this for all the answers.
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