A....post?

Yes, I'm posting, yes, I'm back. Yes, its been weeks. Deal with withdrawls on your own time, suckas.

For now, I would like to bring you something I liked writing very mcuh. A real, live, paper, for a class of mine. Read it and feel my excelent grammar and punctuation skills! It's on social networks and the use of the internet as a personality device.




For this experiment on social experiments, I chose to explore LinkedIn and Facebook, both of which serve completely different purposes and have major differences. The first, and perhaps most important difference, is that LinkedIn shouldn’t even be considered a social networking site at all.
The first thing to note about LinkedIn is that it does not seem to be marketed or designed for the youth audience. That’s not to say the interface and design is not easy and enjoyable, but it is obviously not meant for the MySpace crowd that most social sites tend to aim for. There is no customization, no pictures or songs or custom backgrounds and interfaces. LinkedIn is not a social networking site, it is a networking site. Though it promotes itself as a way to connect with others and find old friends, its main purpose is to connect people with possible employers. At its core, LinkedIn is a more focused, business driven version of CraigsList, but with those mild social benefits.
This gives LinkedIn a few distinct advantages and disadvantages when compared to other networking sites. The fact that it does not attract a younger audience is one such advantage. By allowing to focus itself on adults, LinkedIn is able to focus on the aspect that is its biggest advantage, its job search function. However, it is also a disadvantage for LinkedIn, as without the enormous younger crowd, LinkedIn itself will never be as big as other social networks. Though personally, I believe the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.
Facebook is a network that I, and thousands of others, are intimately familiar with. A new right of passage for new college students is to go onto Facebook the second they receive the acceptance letters and find all their new friends. This was Facebook’s original intention, to be a place for new students to meet each other before they actually meet each other. It wasn’t until only a few months ago when Facebook expanded itself to allow high school students and businesses to join their network.
Facebook, while similar to sites like MySpace or Friendster, uses a single layout for all user sites, keeping it more streamlined and easy to use than other networking sites with a strictly social agenda. Though it helps people connect with new friends, through things like groups and linked interests, it does not seem to encourage outward exploration to meet new people in the same way as MySpace, for example. These features keep Facebook from being as all encompassing as a site like MySpace, but is far more targeted to a younger generation when compared to sites like Ryze or LinkedIn.
With a site like LinkedIn, there is more of a focus on business than actual social interaction. It’s more like exchanging virtual business cards than finding someone to hang out with next weekend. With Facebook, there is the social emphasis, but it can be hard to tell if a person is really a friend even if Facebook says differently. There’s even the term “Facebook Friends,” for people who are merely friends on Facebook and don’t really know each other otherwise. This makes Facebook an excellent example of what the digital age is all about, impersonal personality. There is no networking site that guarantees a true relationship with the people who you become friends with online. There will never be a place online that truly guarantees a relationship with those you meet online. But maybe that’s the best part of it all.