Are Social Networks Encapsulating Us More Than They Are Freeing Us?

Yeah all we hear about these days is Web 2.0 rhetoric and ideas at how what used to be great social networking websites digress into a nice means for some enterprising individuals to create the next great Internet opportunity. I remember when if you wanted to make money through communication technology, you simply charged for the service or platform that people were communicating through. These days people feel that advertising perhaps could be part of the mix, which is sad, because people like to know when they're being marketed to and no one wants their day to day lives being trivialized as advertising ops to help out some companies.

Yet in some ways it had come to that a long time ago; anytime you're wearing something with a logo or trademarked emblem or talking about whom or what company made the products or services you are using, you are using word or mouth to spread that word. So tapping into that potential isn't that farfetched. Yet individuals like to be in control of that action, on the other hand those types of ideas somehow suggest that social networking isn't serious, new, or innovative anymore. In fact it's become somewhat of a commodity; quite one thing when you're paying for the right to email a potential date but quite another when you're trying to maintain friendships and relationships. Then again let's just be completely honest here for a second; it's just easier to meet and network online than it is in real life for some of us. As much as I like to write I prefer the real life equivalent but it is a lot of time and work networking and you can kill a lot of birds with one stone behind the computer.

Social networking goes far beyond mere websites tailor made for the purpose, and if you're relying on them too heavily you're missing the real point of social networking to begin with. You need a clear purpose in mind to get past the mere infatuation of social networking and the crippling effects that putting everything in the basket of the Internet can have on your real life social networks.