Social Networking

Everyone should know what social networking is, and even if they didn't, then they are most likely doing it everyday. Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter are some examples of social networking and they have thousands of users on everyday.

Social networking is mainly used to keep in touch with friends and perhaps create new ones with others who have similar interests with yours. People can not always keep in touch with each other in real life because they are probably busy with school, work, etc. Thus they are not able to see each other in real life or talk to each other on the phone. But with social networking, they can keep in touch with friends they have not seen in months or even years. People can check each other's status, photos of themselves, 'chat' with each other, and other various things.

There is of course a dark side to social networking, and it usually involves meeting new people on Myspace or Facebook. As pointed out in this article, when meeting new people who they don't know in real life, they don't know if the stranger truly wants to be their friend. All they have to do is click on the 'add friend' button and boom, +1 to your friend list. But how much do you know them? Are they truly honest? Also, some people stay on those sites for too long, gaining the title of "[insert site here] junkie" and probably compete to gain as much friends as they can (with probably over 90% of them being strangers).

I can't really say much on how they can evolve in the future, since I don't use them at all. All I can think of is having real-time video interactions with each other, with probably at least 1 hour requirement before adding them as friends. Again, this is a grey area since it's really hard to enforce things online.