The Internet's New Social Order

THE NEWS FACTOR -- JAN 26 -- Web sites specifically built to put people in touch with one another -- are booming in terms of participation and new services. Whether you are looking for social chatter, dating, gaming, or networking with other professionals, the Internet has the forum for it, and it has become both easy and fast to acquaint yourself with like-minded people. The communities are becoming so popular that some wonder whether they could fundamentally alter the way humans interact with each other. In addition to the networking behemoth MySpace, which currently has 47.3 million members, there's Friendster, The Well, Tribe Networks, and Bebo. Smaller sites that specialize in just a few topics are springing up, too, like Yelp, an online community devoted to chat about local watering holes and entertainment.  Dating online seems even easier thanks to aggressive recruitment efforts by sites like eHarmony and Match.com; both claim eight million and credit for thousands of marriages. 

The full article was originally published at News Factor, but is no longer available.

Comments

[GA Bass]

While I agree with most everything the author writes, I have to wonder what ultimately becomes of a society where people in quest of relationships prefer to seek anonymity and otherwise hide their character. While there are increasing social sites online there is more suspicion and consequently less engagement in the three dimensional brick and mortar world. It is a least somewhat ironic, if not pathetic, that people can voice their proclivities in cyberspace while they walk past each other on the sidewalk more intent on their usually banal cell phone conversations than in the environment around them. While I can see the positive aspects of human interaction, the global capability the sharing of interests and a certain candor, I also see its consequences. We are an increasingly awkward and inarticulate society who prefers to engage in jargon rather than more definitive descriptions of our modern condition.