Social Networking

Social networking is the current Internet rage so much so that there is a new big screen movie “The Social Network”. My, how far have we come? A long time ago in New Hampshire working for a technical company I remember that the nerd rage was the prize winning book, “The Soul of a New Machine” documenting Data General’s creation of a new mini-computer (the predecessor of today’s PCs). Now it is no longer books, but rather movies. That is progress.

There are three main social networking streams. They all work on the Internet popularity principles of having one user invite other users to view or join. The three streams are Facebook.com, Twitter.com and uTube.com. There are other similar lesser known sites.

Facebook.com is the class reunion killer site. No need to travel to see your old high school buddies because you only need to go to the facebook.com page to communicate with all of them. Facebook is also a way to tie far flung families together. Whenever my children visited they always had their hand out for money, so facebook.com is a real money saving proposition for me. I do have a Facebook.com account and a few friends, but I am not hunting for more. I will write some more on how to use Facebook.com soon.

Twitter.com is a social networking site that permits users to post 140 character messages or less. So you cannot say much, but you can communicate essentials. Also, Twitter messages called Tweets fit easily into cell phone messaging parameters. Similar to Facebook.com you sign up for a personal account. It then focuses you on other Twitter accounts of interest. My new twitter account is DialANerd0. My plan is to write more on this one as well. All the sentences in this paragraph are less than 140 characters. This is to give you a feeling for what tweets are like.

YouTube.com is your own personal TV broadcasting station. This is great when you are a public figure, but perhaps not so great when you want privacy. Oops do not go to UTUBE.COM – it is the wrong site and they insist on signing you into 10 or more advertising items. Good thing I used the cell phone number of someone that stole several thousand dollars from me to sign up at utube.com. They should earn the money that they stole. It was perfectly legal thievery so they deserve something for their bad behavior.

The correct YouTube.com is an easy sign up with no advertising. Once you are on it, you are linked to other YouTube.com accounts that appear in your gmail or yahoo email. You can see all their uploaded videos and link up with them. Since I have the web camera, I am all set to go – just need something good to say on youtube.com. More to come here as well.

While these social networking sites can provide helpful and useful information, they also pose a security risk. Most peoples pass words are linked to something memorable in their life. Back in my radio days, our technician had his AOL account compromised because he stated in his profile he liked skiing. Guess what his password was? Easy for even the most amateur hacker to test when it is so readily served up. So envision a facebook.com public page with lots of good information on what is important to you visible for all. Such a page is definitely a security risk. No public facebook.com page for me as yet, but a public business page may be in the works.

Of the three principal social networking sites, Facebook.com provides the most usable approach to communicate with family and close friends. Looks like I need to check my facebook.com account now to see if any of my grandsons responded to my video email. At least they will not be asking for money or will they? In order to make social networks effective, you must really build your own social/family network.