In this time and age, almost everyone has their own account in one of the countless social networking sites available in the internet. The internet has indeed revolutionized everything in our midst – even the way we interact with society. Making friends and reconnecting with long lost old ones are now easy with just one click of the mouse. In the past, the hype was on Friendster. Until 9 months ago, it was still on Friendster. Now, the new fad is Facebook.
I wrote an article about why Facebook is such a hit but unfortunately I could not publish it here since I’ve already sold its copyright. The downside of being a writer – a ghostwriter that is – is selling your masterpiece to someone else without your byline in it. Well, I hope to change that in the future.
In any case, when I was in high school, I loved the simplicity of Friendster. I had so much fun writing testimonials for each of my friends – recounting my memories of them and citing the great aspects of their personalities. But Friendster had to change, and the change I saw was not good at all so I switched to Multiply. Unfortunately, not too many people made the switch with me but that was ok. I still kept the Friendster account and simply redirected people to Multiply. I also had other social networking sites like Hi5, Ringo and MySpace but they didn’t work out. Then came Facebook.
For several weeks, I had so many invites in my email from reputable friends. I ignored all of them. I do not like riding on to a fad. But when this blogsite said they had a Facebook group, I decided to join in on the bandwagon. At first I though I could disguise myself but thought better of it after seeing countless of my reputable friends using the service. So there I was, a newbie at Facebook. Weeks later, I was an expert. I had so much fun using the service, I wondered why I didn’t start earlier. There were just so many games to try, quizzes to answer and friends to connect to. It was also great organizing my friends into the social networks I’ve met them.
I was not the only one who found Facebook fascinating. My mom does to. It was through the service that she found her high school classmates, even her elementary friends. Imagine that! And it’s not just my mom who have such positive experience but my friends’ moms as well. The games even captured their interests.
But there are still some people who are not captured by the Facebook fever. I have this friend who adamantly maintains his Friendster account even when he has already signed up for Facebook. He has only one friend in Facebook which I believe is his sister. The rest are pending friend requests. He insists that he will wait for 200 friend requests before he jumps in the bandwagon. So far, he has 121 and counting.
The success Facebook has achieved is quite phenomenal. Let me state Facebook’s brief history. It started out as Facemash, a site asking who is Hot and who is Not on the Harvard campus. It was invented by Mark Zuckerberg. He was blogging about a girl who dumped him when the idea hit him. He hacked into facebook accounts of the nine Houses in Harvard, got the inhabitants photos and compared them on his site. He generated a lot of page views. He was ultimately sanctioned for what he did but the idea had been born. He soon began working on a code for The Facebook (thefacebook.com). He was later joined by some of his friends who were in charged of various aspects for running the site. Initially, membership was restricted to Harvard but it soon expanded to other schools. Soon it expanded to the world. For a detailed story, check out the wikipedia article.
Well, so much for Facebook and social networking sites. I have other work to do. 😀 I wonder what site or service would soon capture our interests next.
