Social Networking Two Point Oh!

Social networking has been quite a big thing for a long time now, in the days when Classmates, Epinions and SixDegrees started out it wasn’t a big thing. The scene really kicked off in 2002when Friendster emerged. Friendster didn’t really flourish as it was plaguedwith technical problems,crashing and of course it’s famously slowaccess.Itwas overwhelmed and under-powered, it never really took the reins of Web2.0 and updated itself. Some say the Friendster founder made the biggest dot commistake ever by turning down the offer fromGoogle of $30million USD. It reallyexplodedgloballywithMyspacewhich was rumoured to be gettingmore traffic than Google.com at one point. Google has their own social networking site calledOrkut,which alsowasn’tmuch of a hit. Back in the UK, Friends Reunited was pretty popular for alumni getting together from primary schoold, secondary schools and colleges around Britain. Around that time Yahoo! also launched 360,another flop.

In thesecommunities,aninitialset offounders send out messages inviting members of their own personal networks to join the site. New membersrepeat theprocess,growing the total number ofmembers and links in the network. Sites then offer features such as automatic address book updates, viewable profiles, the ability toformnewlinks through"introduction services," and other forms of online social connections. Social networks can also be organized around business connections, as in the case of LinkedIn. Myspace has done pretty well though blendingwith themusic scenes,it’s nowthe launching place for many indie acts and most legitimate groups and artists have aMyspace page.

Now we come to the ultimate social networking sit called Facebook,you can find it at: http://www.facebook.com Facebook originally started out as a site for college communities in the US but has expanded and is now open to everyone. Facebook is :


Step 1 : Register at Facebook The first thing you need to do is register your account at Facebook, you can do so by going to http://www.facebook.com and clicking the ‘sign up’ link. Please do fill in as much information as possible and ensure your e-mail address is valid as it’s required for the next step.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 2 :Activate your account
It’s recommended that you use your real name and you must use a real e-mail address it’s required to activate your account.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 3 :Add some friends
After you’ve activated your account you can login and start off by adding some friends, the cool part is you can put your login details for Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo! and it will pick out all your contacts that are members on Facebook – so you can add them directly.

 

 

 

 

 

Step 4 : Get some applications
Applications are something likeWidgets, they are small web applications that you can add to your Facebook account to enhance your experience and to have fun with your friends. You can integrate your Flickr account, compare movie tastes and all sorts of things.

 

 

 

 

 

Step 5 : Get addicted
You can spend hours on Facebook seriously, it’s an amazing web application. Just be careful you don’t get addicted and check your Facebook front page every hour…like me and everyone else I know. Enjoy!