TREND VS FUNCTION....SOCIAL NETWORKING

Trend vs. function. Social Networking

It’s really hard to define social networking either as a trend or a function. I strongly believe that it has part of both.

In it’s most basic form, Social Networking is a group of people connected through a web page; where members can explore and share things that interest them; whether it’s music, movies, political interests, religion; basically anything you want.

Today there are thousands of different social networking sites on the web, from Bebo, to Twitter and on to the most used one: Facebook.

“Facebook is a free-access social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc.Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. The website's name refers to the paper face books depicting members of acampus community that some US colleges and Preparatory schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff as a way to get to know other people on campus”. “Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia”

Mark Zuckerberg founded facebook while he was attending Harvard University. At first this site was limited to Harvard students, then it expanded all around Boston and later became what it is today, with more than 350,000,000 users world wide, it is the most used Social Network ever.

Truthfully it is highly addictive, there are times when I have spent more than an hour just looking through other peoples profiles, Their pictures, their information, their friends. And starting with one person, it leads you to another, then another and before you know it you’ve looked at ten different people’s profile, ad the thing is you probably don’t even know these people; you just get glued to it.

If you learn to control yourself, and you MUST, facebook, and other social networks can be very useful. It helps you keep in touch with people, even if they are close by. For example, with school projects, you can easily create a group for people who you are working on a project with, and this helps everyone stay organized and follow the path that their project is taking, you can update information, ask questions, and keep everything on track.

The main reason I use facebook is to keep in touch with my mother and my friends. I used to live in Mexico, and since I’ve been here, Facebook has really helped us to stay up to date on our lives. You don’t have to spend any money on phone calls, you could instantly let them know if something is happening in your life or if you need anything, and you can show them everything about yourself, through pictures, videos, wall posts, and more recently instant messaging.

Because of this, I believe that social networking is a great tool, I wouldn’t define it only as a trend; it’s more of a trend evolved into a function; and the thing is it’s only going to get bigger and bigger, so I recommend taking advantage of them and all technological advances in that case, because it’s not something that is going to come to an end. I think its better to embrace all these new tools we have and use it in a way that will help us evolve socially, intellectually and technologically in a positive way.