Social networks

Social networks and my Thoughts……



Social networks are becoming the part of our life these days. Face book, MySpace and orkut are few among them. But have you any time took out some time of yours and put the thoughts on why and how it works?

Here are my thoughts and views on these social networks and especially on Orkut.com which most of us know.

Social networks at least to me go back to year 2000 of my Engineering days. There was batchmates.com which tried to get contact your classmates and connect you with them. That was an interesting to get more details about your seniors and their where about. But some it was not easy to use and user interactive. I am not sure what social network existed before to batch mates.

Some where in mid of 2004, Orkut came in the big way for the Indians. It stared spreading so fast that literally every one having internet access started getting a user id to the orkut. I started using it is some where September 2005. Let me tell frankly, it made me crazy and forced me to spend lot of time on it. The way it was designed the user interface and easy to use was simply amazing. The word “scrap books” was very catchy and impressive feature. “Testimonial” allowed others to express admiration or appreciation about some one. “Communities” helped to create some commonalities between the people and their interest. “Profile” section allowed you to introduce you self and your personality. All in one, it was total package and completely designed for who want to kill the time when they do not have any thing else to do.

Look at the year 2007. A year which considered as “broad band enabling” year where internet is costing as least as our daily salary per month or even lower some time and most of the internet users are now social network users. Here is the few lsit of social network and number of users.

Social network Number of users
MySpace 289000000
Facebook 73500000
orkut 67000000
hi5 50000000
Friendster 50000000
Xanga 40000000
Windows Live Spaces 40000000
Classmates.com 40000000
Bebo 40000000
Flixster 36000000
Tagged.com 30000000
Reunion.com 28000000
Netlog 28000000
Broadcaster.com 26000000
Cyworld 21200000

more thoughs to follow...