The Real World of Social Networking

As little as ten years ago, it seemed average teenagers matured into adults after earning a college degree and entering the “real” world.

Entering the “real” world today, for that same teenager, now appears to be one-click away at LinkedIn, the online networking site that “strengthens and extends your existing network of trusted contacts.”

Plaxo is another online site “meant to be a better way for you to stay in touch with the people you actually know and care about — your family, your real-world friends, and the people you know from business.”

And let’s not forget Tagged.com that professes itself as “a premier social-networking destination” that “helps people keep in touch with their friends and make new ones” through “a fun media experience.” Tagged has 70+ million registered users, but the competitor, Hi5, has 80+ million registered members and is “one of the world’s largest social networks and a top 20 website globally.”

MySpace. Facebook. They are still around too.

Recently, my Gmail inbox has been flooded with requests to become a “contact” or “friend” or “linked-in” with friends, old classmates, business associates, and family. As my luck would have it, each person is on a different social networking site that basically provides the same online service with minor differences. Staying in touch now requires five online accounts and time spent updating profiles.

This world of online friendship is familiar territory for teen, young adults, and college co-eds. And now adults of all professions, who once dared not swim in these unchartered Internet waters, are starting to flood the online friend zones.

A couple of months ago, it seemed foreign for a person I met at a business meeting to request to connect via a networking site. An occasional social network user since 2004, I have come to equate social networking sites to areas where countless hours are wasted browsing the profiles and sometimes-scandalous pictures of friends and people you wanted as friends.

Despite my association of online networks as a breeding ground for publicly visible Internet debauchery, I have slowly begun to ease into the idea that the lawyer I met at a networking event for my film making endeavors is now my social network buddy.

Are these same adults with successful business careers updating their profiles and tracking their friends at three in the morning before going to bed?

I ran into a business associate at a South Beach event that lasted past one in the morning. We both left around the same time, and I returned home around two to go to bed but not before a little Facebook nightcap. To my surprise, that business associate had already updated their Facebook status twenty minutes earlier alerting the online world of their upcoming day.

I will contend that as more adults and business contacts create Facebook accounts and artists and entertainers create MySpace pages, it appears these online social networking sites are becoming “professionalized” and accepted for all.

So whether you decide to get “LinkedIn,” “Tagged,” or “poked” on Facebook, these sites provide a means of staying connected with people and a way to indulge your inner voyeur. And now that college students are not the only ones scanning profiles, our elders can indulge in the pleasures that come with creating an enticing profile and finding that person you have not spoken with since the summer of 6th grade.

A guilty pleasure? A revolutionary communication tool? Whatever you use it as, it seems having at least one social network account is a must to keep us all interconnected and entertained.