Views on Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and other social tools

Myspace and Facebook. What is there to say about them? If you have never heard of either of the two, you have officially lived under a rock somewhere, been cut off from civilization for a large period of time without television, radio, newspapers or any other source of news, or are an alien species in disguise as a human. Whichever the case, it is clear that the two websites are more popular than ever with Facebook edging out Myspace in the popularity contest. But my question is: Why? Why are these websites so popular? What is it that attracts, not only teens and "tweens" but adults and even grandparents to the fad that is Facebook? Let's take a look:

• Lets start with the obvious: Pictures. Facebook had its humble beginings at Harvard where a wily young Mark Zuckerberg invented what will later be renamed as Facebook. Originally intended for the Harvard Alumni and current students, the potential was evident to Zuckerberg and he made it public in 2006. Pictures was and remains the top function of Facebook. It is a way to post your pictures of yourself and your friends at parties, events, at home, work, on the road or on a plane. It is a way of saying, "Hey! This is me!" to your friends and to the world.

• Pulling off the Pictures bullet, Facebook is a way for people to remain in touch even though they are a world away from each other. A mother in Pasadena, California can see her daughter in Seoul, South Korea. One of the attractions of Facebook is reuniting with old high school friends, college roomates, colleges, or those crazy people at work that you didn't know their name, but you recognized them from their profile picture.

• Social Networking is a term used all to often in the 21st Century. We hear it almost daily when listening to the news or browsing the internet. But does anyone really understand what they are doing when logging into Facebook and MySpace? Simply, it is a means of connecting people in terms of friendship, family, finance, sex, religious beliefs, and interest. In essence, it is extremely easy to play "Six Degrees of Seperation" on facebook, as literally almost everyone is connected one way or another

It is these aspects that popularized facebook and it continues to popularize the website. But why does it remain popular? It this Generation Now, we are notorious for having such a short attention span. Case in point, MySpace was popular for about a year, perhaps a year and a half before Facebook swept them off to the side. And yet Facebook was popular to the world in 2006. Four years later, it is still popular. The question remains: Why?

My theory is childish. Not a childish theory, but the world is childish. "I wanna go on Facebook if (s)he's on Facebook." "If (s)he is doing it, then it must be good!" "All my friends are on facebook, so I will join too!" "Facebook just broke records, so it must be good." The world is simply flocking to facebook like sheep being herded because everyone else is doing it. I mean, who is going to use a website like Picbook (not a real website) to post their pics to their friends if none of them are on there? With Facebook's picture uploading and status updates, you can keep your friends, your co-workers, your colleges, your roomate, your best-friend's girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend 4 year past, your dad's cousin's best friend's college roomate, and even your enemies up to date on exactly what you had for supper. Stop the presses...

On the topic of status updates, you cannot mention this without mentioning Twitter, the new fad enveloping the world. Twitter, for those living under rocks or Alien species, is essentially nothing but the status update function of facebook on a different website with a few extended functions. No pictures. No videos. And yet it has over a million subscribers. Why? It is essentially nothing but an online diary in which you tell your friends where you are and what you did 5 minutes ago. Why is this relevant information to share on the internet?

If the founding fathers of the internet at CERN would see what the internet has come to, would they still create it? The internet is unevenly divided into 3 parts:

1. Pornography (which takes up the large majority of the internet)
2. Social Networking Websites (which must take up an astronomical amount of server space and bandwidth)
3. Information, such as wikipedia and online databases (which usually are just texts formatted with HTML)

Facebook and Twitter.. Are they really benefiting the world? Or is it another facet for people losing how to write their native languages. With "lol" officially in the dictionary, and "to" being replaced by "2" on the internet, and the latest cover model of playboy getting ten times more hits than facebook and twitter combined, CERN would scrap the internet and let humanity text itself to death.

- Eric L.