: anniversary / technology special

The rise of a virtual society

||| Hi5, Facebook and MySpace are by far the most popular websites where people interact with each other by chatting or just by sending each other messages, photos, videos, etc. ||| They all come to be a part of a new virtual society that keeps them entertained for hours and even for the whole night.

Before the whole Facebook fever, MySpace and Hi5 had already gained some big fans throughout the world. Finding old friends, meeting new ones or even the simple fact of finding old acquaintances and check on their "private" lives became an addiction to some people.
Social networking became more and more popular, and Hi5 was witness to that fact. It was amazing to find old friends or classmates through this electronic world and be able to share messages, images and other applications available for its users.
After these services became popular, Facebook took hold at Harvard, first as a closed student network, and from there it spread to the world where it taunts other Interntet giants, such as Google and Yahoo!, with its 88 million plus active users from all over the world.

From the very beginning
MySpace is a social community launched in 2003 by its founders Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, and supervised by Brad Greenspan, eUniverse's founder. By 2006 it became the seventh most popular website in the world, according to the web-traffic tracker Alexa.com.
This website has been primarily used by young people that enjoy sharing multimedia content and music applications with others.
Hi5 was launched in 2003 as a privately-held company, headquartered in San Francisco, California. It has been the site's duty to maintain culturally relevant online connections between friends and family.
The site is available in 24 languages, has a mobile mode, like MySpace, and it also has a music service. Even though some people already consider that Hi5 was displaced by Facebook, the page is still very popular in Latin America (much more than MySpace), and according to comScore Media Metrix worldwide figures, it is also the world's fastest growing among the top-10 global social networks.

It is always important to be prudent about the kind of information you put online.

Facebook is the result of a Harvard student's application that began in 2004 as an internal service.
By 2006, it was revealed to the Internet community and since then it has been one of the most popular websites for people of all ages around the world.
The current president and one of the creators is Mark Zuck-erberg, and he is 23 years old. Almost anyone escapes from the Facebook society.
With its different applications that can vary from only sending a virtual drink to play with your pet character in Pet's Society, it keeps people busy for many hours a day. School groups, social causes and event invitations are additional features for this revolutionary virtual universe.

The blogging fever
Another reason to spend part of the day online is the blogging experience, where people of different walks of life enter their daily experiences, talk about their professional expertise, rant about politics or just talk about their pets. It is a way to have a virtual daily log to share information.
There are several sites and services online that provide easy to use applications so one is able to imprint a personality to the blog. Among the popular sites are Blogger, a Google tool, and WordPress.
Both offer tons of options to give your blog a personal touch.
Other popular places to post information are Yahoo's Flickr, BlogCatalog, Punto Hispano and Blogalaxia among others.

How much is too much
There have been rumors and true stories about kidnappings and robberies that, for some reason, have to do with social networks.
It is always important to be prudent about the kind of information you put online because once it goes on the Internet, it can be seen by anyone and everyone who wishes to do so.
Therefore, the recommendation is to check the Privacy Options thoroughly and limit the access of strangers to your profile as best you see fit.
It is also strongly recommended to avoid including phone numbers, home addresses and very private information that can be used against you or to commit identity theft.
Another thing Facebookers do a lot is to tell the whole world what they are doing at anytime, and this include telling people whether or not you are home; thus making yourself vulnerable for home theft. So the best thing is not to give clues about yourself that strangers could use against you. |||