Poke me, friend me, digg me, tweet me

Parkland students poke and friend people all the time, but do they digg and tweet? If you haven't stumbled upon anything fun and exciting today, you're not doing this whole Internet thing right.
Every day students waste their time on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, but why? Entertainment is a big reason. Interaction with friends and strangers is fun; it's what separates us from the animals-that and the opposable thumbs-which coincidentally help us type the messages we send to friends.
Boredom might be another reason, but how many times can you really look at the same people taking the same party photos every weekend? That's not a rhetorical question-seriously, how many times? The alternatives to the big two of MySpace and Facebook are everywhere, but go into any computer lab right now and see the horrible MySpace layouts with the repeating background, or the generous amounts of white space and light blue hues of Facebook. It's as if the students know of nothing else.
Facebook is huge globally, with the fifth most trafficked site in the world, while MySpace is close behind in the seventh spot. Both sites get tons of traffic, but two other social networking sites reside in the global top 20: Hi5 and Orkut. The average American student may have never heard of these two sites until now because Hi5 is popular in Latin America with some influence in Europe, Asia, and Africa, while Orkut is big in Brazil and is the most visited site in that country-even beating out Google Brazil. What does this all mean? Two things, the world is big and Americans don't control everything, especially online and just because something has the most users or is deemed "the best" by the most people doesn't mean it works for everyone.
Social networking sites are for people with like-minded interests and activities who want to interact with other like-minded people. If two people like something they should interact and talk about whatever it is they like. Without social networking sites they may have never even met, but if they've never met in real life have the really even met?
The future of social networking is getting out into the real world and using the service to interact with real people, because being truly social should not occur while in front of a computer screen. How many people have been to an event, talked to some random people and then received friend requests from those same random people? This seems a little backwards. While at the event, your blue-tooth enabled cell phone should have alerted you to others at the event that share similar interests, and given the option to message or identify this person, which might lead to an actual enjoyable interaction. Consider it a technological ice-breaker.
This technology exists through a German company named Aka-aki which is still testing the service of the same name but has made it available in Germany and the United Kingdom. Social networking's future probably doesn't include more Facebooks or MySpaces either. Just like America Online and Geocities grew out of favor with millions of users, so will these companies, maybe not so dramatically, but the Internet is a fickle place with users constantly demanding the newest and best product. Users also demand quality and everyone knows ten great friends are better than 100 average friends, although some profiles would suggest otherwise. This demand for quality will introduce smaller and smaller niche communities. These communities will have fewer friends, but better friends.
Social networking is all about the user. The user wants to interact with others and has many options to choose from, but the user is unsure of what option is best. If the user is into photography-Flickr, Photobucket, Shutterfly, or Snapfish (sites designed for uploading and sharing photos and pictures)-would be good options. If the user really enjoys blogging they might love micro-blogging from their cell-phone with Twitter, Pownce, or Jaiku.
If the user consumes online content daily and wants to share with others, then the bookmarking service Delicious, or StumbleUpon, a service that allows you to discover and rate pages, photos and videos, may be the best choice. The alternatives are out there and when it comes to social networking don't hang with the wrong crowd just because everyone else is doing the exact same thing. Take this advice, it comes from a friend.