The Social Networks – How Can They Help Us?

“Birds of a feather fly together” says an old saying, which is very interesting, because it expresses the truth after all. And these things are also proven by Danah Boyd as well, known for her studies on the sociology of the Internet: “Connecting people with common interests, the social networks support connections between individuals which resemble.”

So we could say that in the social networks of any kind, we are dealing with people that interconnects based on a common interest, or, as Boissevain’s functionalist paradigm says, based on the social roles that they perform. What are virtual social networks? I prefer to listen to Danah Boyd who said: “The virtual social networks are the latest generation of “mediated public space” – space where people can gather in a public area. To some extent, mediated spaces are similar to unmediated, like parks, malls, cafes, etc.. The teenagers are there to connect to their friends. Other persons may participate in the discussion around the subject, if it is interesting or they can ignore the discussion. The public space has multiple roles in social life – allows individuals to give a sense to the social norms that govern the society, lets the people to express themselves and learn from others’ reactions, to get involved in others’ experiences. The virtual social networks are another form of public space”.

Socially, in the virtual networks, there are many things that differ from the real social networks, which are separated geographically and even culturally, where your identity is more visible than on the Internet. Teenagers often create false identities, such as name, age or location to protect themselves. While many parents encourage their children to adopt this tactic to protectfrom strangers , 47% of young people, according to a study adopt this tactic especially to protect them from the eyes of their parents.

For example, the information that the user provides on MySpace says that she is 67 years old, lives in Zimbabwe, while in her personal description indicates that she is 14 years old and is a high school student in Texas. This kind of information is presented when you don’t want your parents to know what you are doing.

To the all mentioned above, I would like to add another statement from the social researcher Danah Boyd: “While there are many virtual social networks, the members tend to follow cultural and linguistic patterns. Very few sites successfully manage to sustain groups from different nations at a single place, even if Orkut is so popular both in India and in Brazil, Cyworld has a large audience in China and South Korea, and MySpace is trying to grow worldwide.

The “Person2Person” Network

What can this mean? Let’s analyze the following scenario: two people from different cities meet on neutral ground. If they pass from the first filter, which is given by the look (which on Internet does not exist), it follows a dialogue in which the two people want to learn more one from each other, especially identifiable information. Mainly, the name (What is your name?) and geographical location of residence (where are you from?). Following the logic matrix of the interest such as Yes (he/she corresponds – go ahead), NO (he/she does not correspond – stop), the two persons may also like to learn fmore, depending on the interest that they have, so they will ask information about the socio-professional location (What do you do?; Are you married?; What do you do with your spare time?)

The virtual social networks are driven by the concept of “users with interests / common needs.” But the user has a “reply” of his own in a defined geographical and cultural space. The members of a virtual network follow cultural and linguistic patterns and is difficult to be present in different socio-cultural areas and even less in geographical areas. No matter how great the need or the common interest is, the user is limited by the physical space in which he lives.

Even if you, user from Canada, meet a user from China, with which you have many common interests, it is more likely to have a more focused communication with a user with common interests from Canada, even if from another city, not necessarily the city you’re living in, than with the one in China, whose name cannot be even pronounced. Why is this more likely? Because in the city in which you live, or even at 150km away, you can meet with an user of the same social networking, and to have a cup a coffee together at a corner cafe, which you both know. No matter how coherent and productive is the communication in cyberspace, a person has association needs in the space geographically delimited. He has also affiliation needs, needs for personal development, need to share the experience gained while living in a common space.

If these allegations are true, and we believe they are, and at these times the virtual social networks are dominated by those that are based on the concept of “common interest”, without being conceptually designed to emphasize the geographic location of the individual. If the people have similar characteristics in the same state, with slight differences, what can we say about the people which live at distances of 2000-3000 miles? They are not only divided by their culture or language, but by many other barriers? Still, this can’t stop you from making friends located at 5000 miles from your location. “Friends” is a matter of speaking, because you can’t say that you have a friend who is not able to come and help you when you have a problem…

I wonder if can we state without mistaking, that virtual social networks will appear covering a wide geographical area, but which will focus on the concept of local features, forming in fact a network of micro-social networks.