Long before the days of social networking, mankind came up with a rather curious way of keeping in touch with people without actually having to actively keep in touch: People forwarded (occasionally) interesting email messages to each other.
This social act was not so much about the message being forwarded in itself, but rather it is about implicitly saying "Hi there, I'm still here as your friend but since we are so busy with life in Bangkok, I'm forwarding you this little bit of nothing instead." An analogy in the animal kingdom would be the way monkeys in a troupe groom one another and search for fleas even when there are none.
However, the problem of these early social networks, or rather social trees, is that repeatedly pressing forward left a rather curious trail for all those downstream to see with email addresses being exposed in a free-for-all.
Then came business networks like LinkedIn and Plaxo. Useful to some they may be, but it was sort of boring and became a chore. Salesmen may like it but I for one did not have the time to keep my LinkedIn profile anywhere close to up to date.
At the same time, the social networking platform-cum-blogs and picture sharing sites aimed at teenagers such as MySpace, Hi5, Orkut (I think - I've never figured that one out) came into being. Rather than forwarding a series of pictures to a hundred people and have 30 bounce back because it filled up their in-box, posting pictures and sharing them for all to see became a viable option. Only problem is that all too often, it really was for all to see.
And then there was Facebook and the world seemed to coalesce around the Facebook model. The sites aimed at teenagers stepped up their privacy controls and the business oriented networks added some fun and some blog-like and photo sharing features.
Why does Facebook work for me? Top of the list is privacy. I only add people I meet and want to be friends with, ignoring for the most past some people who seem to want to have thousands of friends or sources I have met for interviews only in passing.
Most of my list consists of journalists from the region and probably 90 per cent of the Singaporean public relations community (bad mistake, I know, but it is a bit too late to start afresh now). Facebook allows one allow friends access to a full or limited profile, so most of the people I want to be friends with can feed my fish, plant things in my garden or play Scrabulous with me, while those I prefer to keep at arm's length see somewhat less.
What I like most is being able to keep up to date with what is happening with friends without having to actively email them junk or IM them. It is always nice to see the messages, wall posts and ice cream roll in from friends when I set my status to show my frustration at my day job, often when half a dozen companies want me on the same couple of days and refuse to take no for an answer rather than frustration at the job per se.
Then there is the platform nature of Facebook. While Facebook has some built-in applications such as the picture sharing albums and notes (blogs), I seem to spend most of my time playing Scrabulous, a Scrabble-like game. Journalists all over the region seem to think that they are good at the English language but getting to play games against one another really sorts the men from the boys. Cheating is all too easy given the asynchronous nature of the game (some games can take days to finish especially if players are busy or out of the office) so it boils down to an honour system, often with taunts for allowable but impossibly obscure words.
Then there is the factoid like finding out that one particular PR manager has played nearly 200 Scrabulous games while her office staff think she is beavering away at work rather than maintain "media relations" through a friendly game.
Yes, I spent too much time each day popping into Facebook, but more often than not my interaction is not with a Facebook developed application.
One interesting social quirk I find is that people from the same organisation are often not friends with each other even though all of them seem to be happy with being friends with a third party journalist (which is probably much more dangerous). Perhaps it is about not wanting one's boss to see how much flirting messages are on one's wall or not wanting colleagues to see you in a suggestive bikini by the beach.
Recently, I created an event on Facebook inviting people to my mini-birthday party in Singapore and had a rather varied cross section of the Singaporean IT community turn up. A tad unorthodox, but it goes to show that the virtual social networking world and real world do intertwine.
And then there is the politics. Groups exist where people who are not direct friends can congregate and post messages and share media, much like on a good BBS system. One group set up by Democrat Party interns has a grand total of, wait for it, 218 members. Not that the group seems to have much going on in it.
Bangkok senator Rosana Tositrakul's Facebook group probably did not make much of a difference, with the 63 members' votes hardly making a blip in her 740,000 supporters.
More telling is the comparison of a pair of pro- and anti-Thaksin groups, with members of the "I bet I can find 1,000,000 people who dislike Thaksin Shinawatra" group outnumbering the "Thaksin Shinawatra appreciation society" by 2,314 to 205, or more than 10 to one. But still, 2,300 is still a long way off one million. Early days perhaps, and it will be interesting to see how these groups fare come the next general election and whether we will one day elect a blogger to parliament as has been the case in Malaysia.
Social networking sites offer everything that is offered in real life, but in a way that cares not about geographical distance or time zone. My best scrabulous buddy is a journalist in Malaysia, while the one who seems to always come up with words of encouragement when I am down works for Sun Microsystems in Singapore. Some might argue that computers take away from life and real-world social interactions, but could I build and maintain close friendships like this with friends in so many countries in the real world? I think not.
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