Are online social networks taking over the world?

You would have been living on the top of Mount Everest to not know about the latest phenomena taking over the world. For those who are safely down on the ground, they would know that its online social networks which are taking the world by storm. “The tremendous surge in web-based services and applications, known as ‘Web 2.0,’and their corresponding influence on how people create, exchange, and use information” (Dearstyne, 2007, p.25) has prompted the emergence of Online Social Networks, which allows groups of people to interact via online communication.

There is an ENDLESS list of virtual communities a user can be part of, including Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, World of Warcraft and Second Life to name a few.

Each of these forms of communication has emerged from Web 2.0 and each community and world is becoming part of people’s everyday lives. These communities all share the same passion and interest, as they create exciting and alternate social networks (Song and Walden, 2007, p.48).

These groups of people form larger communities from across the world as they share a common interest, idea, task or goal. The various communities and worlds allow them to interact in virtual societies across time, geographical and organizational boundaries and enable them to develop personal relationships.

The interest in these communities and worlds has flourished and spread like wild fire all over the World Wide Web. The development and popularity of social networks, has caused an upsurge of Web 2.0, suggesting that this phenomenon of online social networking is very relevant in today’s world of new media technologies. Interest has also been sparked in scholarly writing particularly regarding the safety of these worlds and communities to the virtual and physical self (Wolfendale, 2007, p.111). However, much has also been written about the use of social networks in education, particularly on how libraries and librarians are using many of the popular social networking sites for communication purposes, by blogging and adding discussion pages (Stephens, 2007, p.45).

Each virtual community and virtual world has varied levels of interaction and participation among their members and ranges from adding comments to blogs or message boards, to competing against other people in online video games such as Massively Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs). Stephens (2007, p.45) says that “networking technologies afford users the chance to interact, share themselves, and create content.”

This is a larger list of online social networks (although there are more)!
- Facebook
- MySpace
- Flickr
- YouTube
- Blogger.com
- Del.ic.ious
- Wikipedia
- World of Warcraft
- Second Life
- EverQuest
- eBay
- Amazon
- Shutterbook
- Mixpo
- Friendster
- Photobucket
- Shutterfly
- Bebo

So, the question remains, have online social networks taken over the world? I believe they have, but there is certainly nothing wrong with that because the emergence of these online social networks is shaping the way we interact and communicate with each other.

References

Dearstyne, B.W. 2007. Blogs, Mashups, & Wikis: Oh, My! Information Management Journal, 41(4): 25-32.

Song, J., and E. Walden. 2007. How Consumer Perceptions of Network Size and Social Interactions Influence the Intention to Adopt Peer-to-Peer Technologies. International Journal of E-Business Research, 3(4): 49-67.

Stephens, M. 2007. Social Networking Services. Library Technology Reports, 43(5): 45-52.

Wolfendale, J. 2007. My avatar, my self: Virtual harm and attachment. Ethics and Information Technology, 9(2): 111-120.