Social networking sites: Bringing the world a bit closer together

Kristina Falcon, Contributor, Jakarta

I've spent many hours of my young life on social networking sites like Friendster, MySpace and Hi5 to name a couple -- creating profiles, uploading pictures, adding friends, accepting requests, leaving comments and chalking up promised testimonials.

These sites are the new hype on the Internet, the latest addition to pop culture and to thousands of individuals, a favorite time-waster.

In Jakarta, students from international schools are able to meet and befriend peers from local schools while in the corporate world, people are able to contact and use each other as valuable resources.

Some users even reunite with old friends while others have found the love of their life. After all, we often stumble upon great things when not looking for it.

It seems that just about everyone I know is on Friendster or sites like it, so what's causing this lasting buzz?

Friendster, created by software engineer and entrepreneur Jonathan Abrams, has hooked more than seven million users around the world. The site was launched March last year and has created a group of avid users, despite having no advertising and still being on beta (test mode).

Although there have been services similar to Friendster, such as sixdegrees.com, which merely made a ripple, the site's success triggered the emergence of myspace.com, tribe.net, hi5.com, linkedin.com and ryze.com, offering "a little extra" -- from additional features to faster connections.

The phenomenon illustrates the Internet's power as a peer-to- peer medium.

Signing up for the sites take seconds. Becoming a member requires filling out a profile that lists only users' first names, gender, location, status, date of birth and what kind of people they are seeking -- from networking to a serious dating relationship.

For people intimidated by new technology, even this process is a cinch! Becoming a full-fledged addict, however, may take over a hundred mouse clicks.

Meeting new and old friends is nothing out of the ordinary in life, but it's taken to a new level on the sites.

"In real life, people meet each other through their friends," Friendster founder Abrams commented to USA Today. "I felt a demand for these type of services and wanted to help people meet new people, but there was room for a new approach."

Rooted in the six degrees of separation principle -- the idea that everyone on the planet is within six friends of friends of everybody else -- users of these sites can flip through profiles of people up to four degrees of separation away.

To add friends to your friend list on sites such as Friendster, MySpace and Hi5, users have to send a request. In tribe.net, users have to ask an existing friend for an introduction.

The most intriguing feature of networking sites is the way they make overlapping social circles (connections) visible, mapping out how you are connected to any user three or four steps in front of you.

As a user's objective is to expand their personal network by adding more friends, common connections lift the awkwardness of befriending a new user. The flip side is that friend lists and personal networks numbers can also be too high, as "promiscuous" friends excessively link themselves to hundreds of people they certainly don't know.

Moreover, by expanding your network, you face a great chance of awkwardness with people who don't really know you or users who want to be friends more than you do. And if you don't feel right about someone contacting you, trust your intuition and give them a miss.

A common feature in networking sites is testimonials or comments. People in your friend list can write a testimonial to you, which is automatically included in your profile and viewed by other users.

The typical testimonial usually consists of memories that your friends incorporate you with and a handful of adjectives. In Friendster, testimonials make your profile seem like your high school yearbook. It is an invaluable resource if you're ever struggling with a self-reflection college application essay or if your ego needs a boost.

Although personal details such as telephone numbers, street addresses and last names may not be included in user profiles and sites claim that they do not sell addresses and personal data to marketers, there are many dangers that still exist.

A majority of user profiles already reveal too much personal information. Young users include the names of their current and past school, interests and additional information about themselves. Multiple profile pictures are common among users.

Alternatively, some users take the next step of fabrication, creating an extra profile using celebrity names and pictures. When taken to extremes, people can create a new persona where they themselves are lost between reality and fiction.

On the other hand, these sites promote diversity and have a unifying power.

It is also a comforting thought knowing that, regardless of our different backgrounds or that there are over six billion people in the world, we are all somehow connected to one another. Whatever the reason behind the success of the trend, like the discovery of electricity and invention of mobile phones, it has revolutionized our lifestyles.