Social networks bridge communication gaps by engaging more people to interactions regardless of their ages, genders, locations, time differences, culture backgrounds, and so on.
However, one interesting fact about social networking, also discussed in Groundswell, is the virtual worlds provided by the groundswell.
Teenagers are obsessed with SNS. I asked students from the sessions I taught, and more than half of them said they checked their facebook page every day, if not more often. Some boy/girlfriends may break up over Facebook messages or status updates, which seems crazy to us living in the 'real' world.
Recently, I noticed people of their 40s (or older) turn to SNS during their 'down' time. In China, there is this popular game called 'Happy Farm' (Farmville cloned from it, and Happy Farm claims to come to the U.S. market in near future: http://www.pcworld.com/article/187444/china_online_game_companies_plan_us_games.html). I saw my friends' moms play Happy Farm and they had a fun time being in the virtual world created by the game. That is when I realized that social networking and the virtual worlds it established are not far away any more.
Like Li & Bernoff said, SNS shifts power from institutions to people. It allows people to interact in new ways.
2 comments:
There are some more information about Happy Farm here:
'Happy Farm' Game Destroys Chinese Jobs, Relationships
http://www.chinasmack.com/stories/happy-farms-popular-online-game/
It is truly impressive how the Chinese people were drawn to this game.
Haha, it truly affects people's attendance rate, job performance, and so forth. Some doctor gave late prescription due to playing Happy Farm, and it became a big scandal for that hospital. People should re-evaluate on-line gaming, as well as virtual world vs. reality.
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