Social networking or show off?

Social networking sites are growing and becoming integral part of our daily life, it’s very cost effective means to stay connected with friends, family and colleagues. I am not a frequent internet user, but I get updates of many friends at the same time and at the same place with just few clicks. Thus, I am happy that it has made our lives much easier.

Definitely, everyone is happy, from users to companies. Many companies have started their own social networking sites. It has become a big source of money market, where they can put several ads and earn a lot.

What about the growing number of social networking sites?

I am fed up maintaining my profile on many different sites; just one or two sites are enough for me. Yet, each day my mail box is full of invitations from many different unknown sites. In fact sometimes it gets difficult because not all our friends are at the same place. Thus, finally we have to join some new site and risk our privacy – ‘Yes’ example is Facebook, last month it has made profiles of many users ‘public’ by default.

No way I want public to know my personal information. We see many unknown visitors visiting our profiles and sending friends request. We try to search friends using our e-mail address, but invitations are sent to all people listed in our address book. Sometimes we face embracement – I still remember an invitation of my friend that was sent to all his mailing list, which includes some people from higher management at our work place.

I believe social networking has become more than just a social network; it has grown as a means to “show off”. I may sound harsh to many, but it’s the fact. Everyone on network is only bother about increasing the number of friends, messages (scraps, tweets or whatever) and comments on photos or profile status. We go on putting lots of personal photos to get more and more comments. It’s just a means to show off (new cars, bikes, houses, onsite trips and even wives, girlfriends or husbands). Many sites have started the online gaming on their sites; people go on playing like a crazy to show off their maximum points to others and forget the actual purpose. I am not pointing towards anyone, and I am not an exception.

I still believe it can never match quality time spend with our friends in a restaurant, over a cup of tea or even chit chat on phone. In fact, chat messengers are many times better than social networking sites to stay in touch with our friends.

We think we are connected with many, but we are living in a fake social networking world. We go on adding many friends to our show off network, and our contacts grow in quantity but not in quality.