Social networking in the modernized way

Besides blogs, the other phenomenon of the Internet is the social networking websites. Social networking are not only available face to face or through telephones nowadays, it can all happen virtually now. These websites were made as a network for socialising catered for diverse categories of people in the society such as colleagues, classmates, friends and even families. These websites are used not only for keeping in touch but also for updating other people in the network about their life or other happenings.

A social network of friends

Social networking websites such as Friendster, Myspace and Facebook have garnered a lot of users and attention from the media plus companies. MySpace has 107 million users while Facebook has 74 million and Friendster has 27 million. This has created a lot of interest from corporations especially for advertising rights. For example, News Corp bought over MySpace on the 19th July 2005 for $580 million (BBC News 2005) which in return MySpace secured $900 million in guaranteed shared advertising revenues over three years from Google Inc. by making the online search leader the site's exclusive search provider in just over a year after that (The Star Online 2007).



Social networking on the Internet contribute a lot to the ever-growing community and the importance of maintaining relationship regardless of location are the key points these websites are acquiring so much profit. However, it is also due to the layouts, contents and the functions of these websites themselves to survive in the competitive cyber world. Friendster was top of the list in social networking websites until a few years ago with the emergence of Facebook and MySpace. Their fall was dramatic as they are trying to climb up the ladder once again (Christy 2007). Their biggest mistake which cost them the plummet was the rejection of Google’s US$30 million offer for Friendster and also because their webpages took too long a time to load. As users became fed up and moved on to other sites, MySpace and Facebook offered more than Friendster had to offer. For instance, the number of photos allowed per user profile. Photos it seems garner more views on a user’s profile as photos. As Schriver puts it, “when words and pictures are working well together, there is little doubt that they afford the reader better information than either one alone”. Thus pictures with captions work well to inform people better and avoid misunderstandings.

Facebook which provides third-party applications increase interactions for users where Walsh (2006) describes a user’s pathway as “multi-linear and multi-directional” and lots of links and content are needed to assist the user’s “learning, to attract and maintain interest”. Thus, the interaction and freedom to choose are the main attractions for website users. Failure to do so will cause less traffic in the website as interest will be loss.

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Reference:

Christy, L 2007, "Friendster redoubles its efforts", The Star Online, viewed 29 September 2007. http://star-techcentral.com/tech/story.asp?file=/2007/8/2/itfeature/18426589&sec=itfeature

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: Creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Pub., New York.

Scott-Joynt, J 2005, "What MySpace means to Murdoch", BBC News, viewed 1 October 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4697671.stm

The Star Online 2007, "Murdoch marvels at prescient MySpace acquisition", The Star, viewed 30 September 2007. http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/10/18/apworld/20071018143440&sec=apworld

Walsh, M 2006, ‘Textual shift: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts’, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 24-37.