I have 1 billion friends
How poor are our parents, who lost their school friends, who won’t be able to talk to the little guy of the schoolyard they met at 6 years old, who won’t be able to know that yes, cousin Sam knew Sarah when he goes to Kings London, the same Sarah they hated in 2nd grade… We, the ‘new generation’, in our wicked global village, thanks to social network, we’ve got the chance to keep everyone in mind and not very far from a click. And we count them: the more you’ve got friends, the better it is… That popularity (an other good question we may think about : what being popular means on the internet?)
Who are these social networks? They are many, but two of them lead the race: MySpace and Facebook. What is improbable in these two networks is that they recreate the real world gap between people. That is not a bad joke, but the result of a research I heard about. When Myspace is most used by young, lower-middle class workers, and musicians, Facebook is used by faculty students, upper-middle class workers, etc. That’s the result of their birth. MySpace has been known because of its artistic and musical aspects, when Facebook is a creation of Harvard students and was reserved, at its begin, to US faculty students.
I used MySpace (at the time I was in a band), now I’m on Facebook…I follow the ‘vogue’, so what will be the next ‘trendy social network’? Will people continue to post private information about themselves on the net with site like Spock (a kind of BigBrother’s database)?
