Social Networking: Not Just an Online Popularity Contest

With all the social networking going on today, I had begun to question its purpose and benefits. In fact I had planed on writing a piece on the topic this morning, on the various social networks out there, and how I question the motives of those who use them as some type of online popularity contest.

I mean there is Facebook, Myspace, Muslimspace, Flickr, Justin.tv, Operator11, Orkut, you name it. There are tons of ways to connect ad meet people online; and out of all honesty they all pretty much do the exact same thing, with the exception of a few.

In fact a lot of these social networks cause a lot of problems in relationships, make identity theft a lot easier, and so forth.

Now don't get me wrong, I myself network online as well. My purpose is to get to know others, share my views, and collaborate with them on an educational as well as social basis.

Recently I signed up on a network called Utterz. You can post audio, video, text, and even images directly from your cell phone, and or computer. I've grown to love the use of its technology, and so I went searching the site channels and added those who have similar interests.

Well last night one of those people posted an interesting, and highly beneficial utter of their own. It was just a short message about an ox laptop they had received, and an image of it. They also included a link to a friends Flickr account that had also received an ox laptop and had more detailed pictures.

I had remembered seeing this laptop and heard about its program on CNN or something like that a few months ago. My first thought was, well how did they get one. I thought these laptops were for children in poor countries.

So I ventured over to OLPC and to my amazement they have started a program in which if you donate one, you can get one yourself, and or even better if your organization donates over 100 you can choose exactly where it goes.

I was so amazed that I portly emailed almost every family and friend I had d asked them to support the program. I posted banners and information about the program on my website as well.

To make a long story short, online social networking has its benefits, and it really just depends on ones intention when we use them. Its not always a big online popularity contest to see how many people you can add to your profile that you really do not know, don't have anything in common with and never even talk to.

Online social networking has great benefits and this is just a small example of one of them. I even read an article about a lady this month that, thanks to the support of her online social network was able to loose over 400 plus pounds due to loneliness and over eating.