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| Hold up, let me update my status real quick |
-The Playground
This was the first sight I can remember craving. All the users were my demographic, so it was easy to connect with them. It had the best built in games that weren't obnoxious. If I wanted to know how well Rico was doing on the monkey bars, I just had to walk over and find out. If I wanted some multi-player games, I could play tag or get on the merry-go-round. Site security was an issue sometimes though, as I had to get parental permission to access it, I had to watch out for pedo's offering candy, & I could easily pick up a virus from the hardware. Not sure when...but I just outgrew it.
-The Gym
The gym exploded onto the scene once I got into sports. It was more cliquish than most sites, since you typically stayed within your group when you visited it. It was one of the few sites that mixed exercise with social networking, which is like oil and water most of the time. Not the place for depth though, as most of the interactions were based on physical attributes...just don't call any of it's members shallow.
-The Mall
As far as marketing and advertising go, you can't discount the mall. During high school, every weekend I was there chilling in the food court looking for girls and making fun of randoms. This site preys on impulse & insecurity though. If your advances toward a girl were rejected, the material things that the immature feel would boost them were sold right there in its marketplace...Genius! The half-life of the mall was rather short though, as it was very easy to get burned out.
One thing that I prefer about these sites, as opposed to the online sites that we've come to know and love, is the context. As we continue to evolve with technology, the context of our actions is fading. Speech can be misinterpreted or misunderstood, but text lacks body language and tone which provide a lot of information to the listener.
The sense of privacy is skewed. Once comfortable with the site, it's easy to over-expose yourself (sometimes both literally and metaphorically...shout out to Rule X). Having a circle of friends that you consistently engage with online can sometimes make you forget that them & the other 300 friends on your account can see all of your intimate posts. A raunchy joke about a farmer's wife, daughter, & milking machine (ask me about it later) in the right social setting is fine. Posting it as a status update on Facebook probably isn't, regardless of the FB chat conversation that prompted it. Sure, I may have close friends that I discuss masturbatory strategies with, but when that conversation is had over Twitter with an open account...the world can see that I get off watching pregnancy exercise videos (Try explaining that one to your 8 year old cousin).
The most surprising effect of these sites and the "always connected" mentality a lot of people have is how they approach real life situations. People will disconnected from a real life social event to connect to a website to talk about how much fun they are having at the event. People were watching football at my place last week, and one guy tweeted about the game more than he watched it. Watching events while tweeting has become one of the staples of the service, allowing people to hear opinions and reactions instantly...but...if you are around people, you can do this verbally rather than tweet about it so the person ten feet from you can read it on their phone. No lie, I've been to group events where 3 or 4 people from the group were having conversations online while sitting within arms reach of each other...That shit is foolish.
I am by no means bashing social networking websites. I am a heavy user of Facebook and a disgruntled user of Twitter. I say all that to say this: Be mindful not to log out of life to log in online.
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