Saturday, September 18, 2010

Why SNS?


There are many different social network sites out there by now and more people starting every day. Suddenly, I was wondering why more and more people join social network sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Orkut and Hi5 and so on. What do people get out of them? The main reason joining the social network sites would be that people can meet and find new friends. Everyone in SNS can browse the network and meet new people from all over the world. According to Dunbar, chatting and socializing in humans is similar to physical grooming in ape wild world. 'Language is much more efficient than physical grooming for one can talk to several people at once. Also, language helps people learn about cultural norms, evaluate others' behavior and keep up with the news and shifting opinions of their surrounding community. '(Dunbar, 1996) People say “hello” to their neighbors, ask how they're doing and share their common interests and news. So people can create social bonds. Moreover, SNS enables people to strengthen and maintain their relationships with friends.

I have an account with facebook. As my experience, Facebook is sort of a current affairs site where latest news and events are updated at all times. I want to know what happened to my friends and don’t want to miss out. So I view the posting and commenting on status reports wall. Especially, I have many friends who live in different country. It is hard to meet and have a chat on msn or any other instant messages because we all have time difference. So we normally leave the messages and commenting on facebook. To me, SNSs like facebook help me out to keep in touch regularly with my friends who live in different country.

Now people can do so much more with a SNS than just meet people and send messages. People add videos, listen to their favourite music and find old friends. Also, SNS let people share or promote their business, individual talents and help with a problem and ones’ concerns on a condition they may have. To sum up, I think people will get a friendship, networking and a sense of belonging out of SNS. Therefore, more people will join social network sites.

1 comment:

  1. Nice post. I think another issue on why people would like to engage with social media is because of non-instant reaction, it is a bit contracting though, but like facebook, I could just choose to reply when I want to, I have a control and at the same time is to think before I react. While in face to face or phone conversation, sometimes you might not in a mood for gathering?

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