Tuesday, March 23, 2010

See You in the Funny Papers: Cartoons and Social Networks

This reading resonates in me. Social networks have completely change my life. Before hi5 and facebook I was simply a shy person thriving to make new friends. Well, I had my colleagues from my years at the university but most of the time we had different interests. Figure 3 shows a cartoons that made me smile: Because of networking sites I needed a new address book. One interesting thing is when you meet someone in the street and you both stare at each other until you remember that this is one of these "new" friends.

At the same time, I think that these relationships created by networking on the web can create a toll on "real" relationship. For instance, the more people I meet that are more like me the more I lean towards them instead of getting closer to my non-virtual friends. If it was food, I would say that networking satisfies soul's craving. And I think that the cartoons on p 6 portray that perfectly! And the sky (sorry), the world wide web is the limit!

One other great thing that i like about networks is that it offers the opportunity to truly know the other person. Don't need years to figure out who that person is truly; the history of a wall on Facebook tells all.

Besides networking is great when one is working on a project. I usually simply update my status and ask for help. I have FB friends that have more than five thousands friends thus I will ask them to borrow their status for 2 hours when I need feedback; and people are usually eager to help. Figure 18 totally shows how circular network connections are.

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