The Era of SNS ....

In my Engg. 1st year, I didn't had the slightest idea regarding Social Networking Sites (SNS). At least, I don't know how to properly use an E-mail ... "Social Networking tho Bahut doore ki baath hai". I didn't have a personal comp. in the 1st year. So used to go to the library for using Internet. There, I was introduced to "Orkut" by my classmate & friend Mohit. That was my first SNS.

Orkut :- This term is heard by most of us during the 2006-2009 Era (If U r in India). Everyone had a Orkut account at that time. In colleges, people used to compete with others in terms of no. of "scraps" or even friends. Boys used to hunt for girls by sending a "Friend Request". Orkut was even in news. I even heard about some cyber crimes in which Orkut was offender's platform. Youth is the main target in these crimes.

GTalk or Gmail :- Orkut and Gmail can be used with same username. Gmail introduced an integrated chat along with Mail itself. That's Gtalk. It bought a revolutionary change. People started to use Gmail instead of Yahoo!!, Hotmail, etc. Most of the people in India use Gmail. U can say that this is the most used IM in India.

Facebook :-  People got bored doing all that "scraps" in the Orkut. It came to a threshold. Eventually No. of Scraps r not at all increasing. They r looking for something new. Facebook came to the rescue. It started in 2004. American people had been using it a lot since 2005 or even before. Indian "Janata" too started using it extensively from 2009. It has features like "like", pages, good elegant interface, private and public messages, chat, Wall, etc. It also has applications or games like Mafia Wars, FarmVille, etc, which are quite addictive. These classic features gave it a place in "Top 100 classic Websites" in 2007.

                        Nowadays, People are so addicted to Facebook that they are buying mobiles with Facebook applications pre-installed on it so that they can be online on-the-Go. Everybody is waiting for somebody to comment or "like" their status, photos, videos, etc.

Twitter :- When it comes to Twitter, it is completely different from Facebook. "Following and Followers" - "Tweets and Retweets". Like in Orkut where people used compete in number of scraps, In Twitter too they compete in terms of number of Tweets. But there's easy way here. "Just Retweet the Tweets U got from whom U follow". That's what I do most of the times, but I retweet a little sensible ones. LOL.

There is also a kind of Barter system over here to increase the no. of followers U have. " You follow me, I follow You" or "I followed you, follow me back please..!!!"...These are mostly commonly found in this barter system. There are even services who will provide you with certain number of followers if U pay the mentioned amount. That's Weird. I guess people do such things to promote their business, site or something else. In my view, Wat really made "Twitter" a success is " The presence of a lot of celebrities from various fields, countries, domains, etc ". U name one, he/she is already on Twitter (Probability ~ 99.99%).

There r many other SNS like MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. I don't use all of them otherwise U won't have much time to do anything else in ur life. Nowadays, People r using SNS so extensively that people in the same room are talking through some IM or Facebook.

Whatever SNS it maybe, "Beware" of Cyber crimes. Play Safe...!!!