Three social networks that affected me the most are: Orkut, Twitter and FaceBook.
I always believed that social networks have some good use. Online or offline - making friends is interesting and useful.
Orkut was there to reconnect with old friends. I met few of my school friends after almost 10 year through Orkut. apart from that I made some awesome people. I really like to talk about few of them. One lady I met on Orkut went on to be an actress in Telugu film industry. she deleted her account immediately after getting media attention. Another interesting person is an entrepreneur who used to be a regular software engineer back then. He had a website in a regional language and helped connect the people away from state by providing the music and news of their state in India. It was already being valued in lakhs back then. I met him few times too and he is a really cheerful guy. He left his job to take up his website development as primary work and now he is making good bucks. He is famous in his state and also owns a BMW now. Few more people I met through Orkut communities helped me in applying for few jobs. It’s a different story though that I had to join Infy by applying offline and off-campus. like many other guys I too tried to hit on few beautiful girls. Sometimes it worked and interestingly few of them are still on active my chat list.
Slowly I got bored of Orkut. Reasons are many: people getting into competition of gaining good number of friends or sometimes using Orkut instead of their chat room and there was no interesting feature add-on or improvisation by Orkut back then. Then I got introduced to Twitter through few blogger friend in office. I loved it instantly. One of the many reasons was I could blog or write haiku and get to meet many interesting people. Twitter is for staying updated. Information overload complaint is overrated since you over time gain the skill of reading only interesting tweets from your timeline. I met people whose movie reviews matched with my taste and few citizen journalists who would inform you all the news live. It was fun. But there was a way to gain attention there. I could not gain that and did not try enough too. Few of my early friends still follow me. Many unfollowed me after few of my not-so-interesting tweets or inactiveness I guess. Many followed me again in facebook too. I could say the bond got stronger with them. But I have been poor at maintaining friends. Not only on social networking sites, but also with offline friends. But getting to see few of those whom I followed back then achieving new niches in life or getting famous (which most of them are now) makes me smile even today. One can always feel proud to have known these achievers, even though those achievers might themselves not recognise you. People hardly notice how many lives they touch and leave their fingerprints on.
When I joined IIMB I was already invisible in twitter. I could not think of tweeting anything as I found everything uninteresting and felt that what is the point of tweeting something which wouldn’t be discussed among people. Getting fewer ‘@’s bothered me a lot. But i forgot about people like me who read tweets and check links but do not discuss much. And I think should keep updating for those few who might still be interested in knowing if I watched any interesting movie. Another thing which moved me away from Twitter if my real life friends circle. Though amused and intersted in my new found curiousness of tweeting everything they were bothered by my interest in reading tweets regularly. Obviously you get sidelined in social networks when you miss most of the conversations.
When I was in my first job I joined most of the social networks coming up. I do not remember about my presence in most of them now. FaceBook was also one of these. I found growing interest in FaceBook after coming to IIMB since this was one easy way to be noticed by one lady I wanted to impress. soon I didn’t need FaceBook for the same. But it was so interesting to be in touch with so many people so easily. Moreover the satisfaction of seeing people liking your links and status messages was sort of an addiction. Now that I am in the phase of getting over the lady I find little use of FaceBook and staying up-to-date about friends seems exhausting and distracting. But I still like FaceBook and Twiter cause I still want to share my new findings that I discover in this web-world with like-minded people.
Can I ever get out of this want for acknowledgement and fame that these social network sites somehow feed me virtually? May be not? But now I care less. Seems as if my attribute of ‘carelessness’ is slowly becoming a shield rather than the weakness it normally is.
P.S. 1: The satisfaction of being acknowledged is something which very few people understand though it is something most of us do enjoy. But you would understand it for sure if you watched Naruto. The Like button exploits the craving of people for this feeling, but I know people who just did their work and did not expect any fruit in return.
P.S. 2: One thing I would like to cit is this blog by Bombay Addict. You need to read Prolific Dyslexic’s recent blog on twitter too. anyhow there’s something to quote from b50 “And I think at some point we start expecting people to behave in a certain way. I think those expectations become a burden. I’m ok with imperfect people. I like imperfect people. They’re like me. I don’t think I can live up to anyone’s expectations and I don’t think I want to. I will be inconsistent.”
P.S. 3: I still add people to my follow list. And please excuse me for grammatical mistakes. It is not that I am bad at it. it’s just that my carelessness doesn’t let me do double check on what I write. You may still cite them to me and I shall correct them.
P.S. 4: You can already see it from my PS above. I already assume an audience. :D
