Sunday, March 23, 2008

Blogs better than social networking sites

I am back on the blogosphere. I haven't blogged for two full weeks -- quite a long stretch for me. However, I found that people were visiting my blog and some were leaving comments. So, to that extent my blog was alive!

Over the recent past, I have been noticing unusually more number of invites for joining social networking sites. Looks like these sites are proliferating at quite a fast rate. Most of these invites are auto-sent, because the person who has signed up has blindly clicked on a link which sends these invites automatically to everyone on their contact list.

Earlier -- even though I knew that these invites were not personal, intended ones -- I used to sign up. Then I realised that I was getting invites faster than I could keep pace with the existing ones. Now I just ignore these invites unless there's something very striking about them. For now, I am sticking to LinkedIn, Orkut and Facebook, though, I am on many other networks as well.

I have seen that many people use these social networking sites to chat when the other person is online. That could anyway be done with existing devices like Gmail, Yahoo or MSN. People also use it to upload photos and videos. But that function works better on devices like Youtube. So, at the end of it all, I find that that more than as an instant communication medium, these social networking sites serve better as a good database of people one has interacted with -- from friends to total strangers -- by virtue of the detailed profiles that are available.

I feel blogs are much better networking devices than these sites. On networking sites, there is nothing more than a number of "hello-s" and "hi-s" being exchanged, or at the best, "O, it is such a long time, where have been hiding" types. There is no substantial exchange on anything of each one's interests.

I believe, one gets to know of another person's interests much better through blogs than through networking sites. Blogs reveal an individual's personality better than social networking sites. Networking sites generally lack depth or any meaningful content. Therefore, acquaintance or friendship or even a more stronger relationship which has grown out of interaction through blogs will be more steadfast and strong than those that have grown out of networking sites. Personally, I have got to know more number of people through blogs than through social networking sites. I don't find that surprising. I guess teenagers and youth are on these virtual social clubs more for fun than anything else.

I chanced upon an interesting post by Pramit Singh on 9 solid reasons why E-mail still beats social networking.

Well, just to add to what Pramit has written, social networking sites are beaten not just by emails, but by weblogs as well.

10 comments:

  1. In my case... I use orkut to be in touch with my classmates. I dont see the need of signing into more than that.... and most of the time our communications are just hellos or some wishes or PJs --as you said....

    I dont knwo what name to call it (Networking or whatever...). coz I dont have many people in my list whom I didnt know prior to orkut days.

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  2. I agree, Blogs are great at social networking too.

    Great Post. I shall look forward to reading more interesting things on your blog.

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  3. To a large extent, I agree. I don't use social networking sites at all. But, on Orkut I did manage to find people from long ago.

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  4. Interestign post. I tried Ryze.com, but lost interest after a while; same with Orkut, Facebook. Agree with you, blogging has never bored me, even after 20 months since I became a blogger.

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  5. Hi Pradeep, thanks again for giving me the link to your blog. I'm a blogger fan myself and think those networking site or whatever they choose to be called aren't very useful, I tend to sign up on them, set a profile, where I mention my blog and then forget about it. I also tend to hate how total stranger just message me saying "Hi can I be your friend". Makes me feel like I'm a stamp to be added to a stamp collection album of somekind.

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  6. Hi Pradeep, thanks for giving me the link to your blog. I could not agree more with you on those networking sites or whatever people want to call them, I subscribed to a few, but almost never visit them. I just hate those random messages from total strangers who say "Hi wann b my friend?" and add me to their list as if I were a collector's sticker or stamp.

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  7. Right you are Pradeep but in my view, it you feel strongly about an issue, discussion forums are the best becasue of the interactive element. There is a lot of unnecessary duplication in blogs becasue of people writing all over the place. Community blogs are the best for issue based writing.

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  8. personally - i hv also stayed away from orkut, too many things to do i guess.

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  9. While I don't use a social networking site, my great-nephew, who stayed with me for a couple of months while he was doing his clinicals with physicians in Columbus to get his medical degree, he met a girl online who he is now dating regularly. He showed me her picture online and I remarked that she was beautiful. Later, he brought her to my home for me to meet her. The picture didn't lie. She was beautiful, and besides that, had charm and evidenced intelligence so sometimes it does work.

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  10. Hear, hear, Pradeep! One seems to recieve as many invites or to S/N sites as the number of e-mail contacts in the address book! I prefer to search and respond to 'thinkers'!

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