FACE-BOOKED

The week’s international networking headlines were highlighted by the revolution or even to a certain percentage the recreation of your favourite website – facebook. The maverick creator Mr. Zuckerberg announced it in a keynote speech about the features of the all ‘new and rejuvenated’ facebook with features ranging from improved chat features, the timeline, which is already creating waves, status updates, friend lists, subscriptions and what not. True the ideas were being built for a long time in a lot of sectors; and it is more than often that you come to question the originality of the idea – but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you have got to know that your favourite online consumer piggyback as being all improved, and you will find out more about the ideas yourself – in the all human quest for what has changed around you. And you will go back to your home page – again and again.

The ideal question at this moment, or rather any such moment whatsoever ever since the social networking online phenomena set into our minds, was – why facebook? I mean true it was a brilliant idea; but all the technical ideas which you have gotten to face in the past ten years, online or offline, have been just as much brilliant. But still, 9 of every 10 people around me – and yes these are the representatives of the upcoming generation of i – pads and pods, of the 12.5 % gdp growth rate, of petrol coming to be @ Rs. 67 – have to open facebook as the first thing they go online. Be it have 1 or 10 notifications, be it trying to stalk a girl online or to talk to one, be it having 10 or 550 people on the chat list at 2 a.m., or the simple layman reason of an excuse to kill time – there is always an inner rush in me and in you – to login. This being kept aside that you’d be actually concerned with less than 40 people in a friend list of 400; and lo! Behold the new ‘close friends’ list. It seems even the Zuckerbergs came to guess how vague the facebook version of ‘friends’ got to be.

Over the years of creations and recreation, facebook came about to embody all that was possible to be found in the circle of online hoopla – ads, causes, development, politics, hate groups, online albums, etc. But on boiling down to the actual basic premise of what the idea facebook came to exploit – was the basic human need to connect. We all loved to have a different version or an online ‘avatar’ of ourselves – which talked the way we wanted to speak, which looked the smartest possible way you wanted to look, which did and boasted of doing all those things which you wanted everyone to see. We all loved to have a version of ourselves which helped us define ourselves as ‘online cool’. And yes, we would love to see how other such versions have come out to be. Throw in a chat feature and you now rule in the same dimension as messaging and chat rooms have come to be – where people would love to read and write in ways they won’t dare to speak. Of course facebook wasn’t the only one with this idea- but again it just happened to be the ‘coolest’ of them all.

If you have billions and billions of a certain world going online to see people they have already seen, to love to have people ‘comment’ on what they like or don’t like, feel or don’t feel; you get to realize how strangely weak and strong the world has come up to be. Strong in information. Weak in connection and need. Yes – in the internet world of today, a social network is nothing less than a game changer in letting the world know about you what you want them to.

But how far can this show the truth; aiding you in your escape from reality – that is the question to answer.

Tags: Facebook, facebook features, facebook-new-apps, Mark Zuckerberg, social networking sites