In mid 2000, Orkut being preferred by users from US, while just five years later Brazil and India became top users. While Facebook and MySpace surpassed others in US. In different time frames and regions, arose different social networking sites which today stand somewhat around 200 in numbers!(..thats shown in Wikipedia). This multibillion dollar industry is one which is driven mostly by their users present worldwide. Facebook has around 500 million active users (70% of which are from outside US and 50% visit on any single day) who spend 700 billion minutes every month on it, making it above 45mins for single site per user itself. Considering any user chooses 1 more (out of 199), now spends at least an hour and looses 7 USD (that’s federal minimum wage per hour) per day. When Orkut was launched it allowed anyone above 18 yrs. to join and just a month later Facebook was launched which dropped this age to even 13 yrs. considering the growing new comers. Even today in India the percentage change in number of users for last one year is 179 for Facebook while it is mere 16 for Orkut, sites like Twitter and Shtyle.fm are on their way to with percentages above 200.
Like giving a lecture on human evolution, a similar attempt on evolution of social networking websites can also prove a hard shell to crack even for the witty. Gone are the days when students used to bunk their classes and nocturnal beings used to skip their mid night meals to get their hands on Orkut. Those profiles are now left abandoned by the same users who spent sleepless nights to decorate them. However the good news is those dedicated users have got more tools to play with (Hi5, MySpace, Bebo, Twitter, LinkedIn and list goes on..). These websites in a very small span of time have gained such a larger than life charisma, that they can now be plotted on any 2-dimensional graphs for critical evaluations. A shift is also visible from need to maintain existing relationships and expanding to more, to a “rat race” to gain more friends, followers, access to apps, posting even more “must watch” vids (thanks to Youtube for and expanding space to express oneself to others (and more of them). Definitely such a shift in need may altogether change the preference of users from somewhat old-school “Geocities” to high flying “Twitter” based interfaces. Such a trend in social networking website preferences may seem beyond the explanation by classical PLC but a cryptic pattern in communication between individuals is definitely evident. At the same time different depths are also arising in this arena with friendly faces of Facebook to professional touch of LinkedIn to music maniacs of MySpace.
It cannot be denied that social networking sites like Facebook, Clixtr, Gowalla have changed the way we communicate by giving new dimensions and providing an integrated business solution from mobile to web space. However knowingly or unknowingly we leave several foot prints of ours while playing with these tools on web space which have paved ways for the uninvited to enter in our territory (as most of us don’t care what EULA is or clicking on a radio button means..) and it has now become possible for “top shots” to gain any and every bit of information (even more than state intelligence systems have) just for a handful of dollars(..they call it smart business!). Maybe it is not a reason to worry about but activities like spamming, phishing, frandshipper (and others are even hard to pronunciate..) have already forced some Islamic nations to put a ban on them on ethical grounds. Even in our country several MNC’s provide limited access to these tools for their employees to avoid any annoyance. What's also important is to remember that there are plenty of smart programmers behind those pages with "tasty graphics" who have dedicated their lives(and became "accidental billionaires" in return) and created these tools for a unique purpose.
