Who does not, at some point or other in life, get nostalgic about their childhood friendships – that neighborhood kid they played together with in the garden, the kids from school who were regulars for play dates or even the friends they hung around with in college? Looking for these friends and reconnecting would have been impossible if not for social networking websites, like Orkut or Facebook, which is without doubt the most popular social networking websites today.
Founded in the year 2004, this website, www.facebook.com, is a boon for people who want to stay in touch with friends, whichever part of the world they live in. To have a Facebook account, one only has to be an adult, that is, minimum 18 years of age and have an email id. On registering, one can search by friends’ names, and send them friend requests. If they too have a Facebook account (who doesn’t?), they just have to accept this request and that’s it! You are friends for life! You can then share photos, videos, links, comments, send messages and even chat on a daily basis.
What’s more, if you have any friends in common, Facebook automatically throws up their profiles for you to send friend requests. The ‘People You May Know’ feature pulls out profiles of friends of friends, whom you might know. Thus, Facebook does the searching for you and all you need to do is send friend requests. If you wish to decline a friend request, you can do so too.
Another interesting, almost addictive, feature is the ‘status’ field. You type anything that’s on your mind and every friend can respond to this, in real time! So a simple statement like ‘Just brushed my teeth’ evokes so many varied responses from friends the world over, it is fun and truly amazing!
The ‘Event’ feature is great for sending out multiple invitations to all your friends for any event you organize. Forgetting birthdays is a thing of the past, with Facebook posting reminders for friends’ birthdays.
A lot of people are wary of such social networking sites as they seemingly give away too much information, but it can all be controlled with the right privacy settings. Anyone who does not wish to be seen having an account on Facebook can set his/ her privacy settings to that effect. Similarly, you can hide your contacts, share photos only with those you want to and even block out a particularly pesky person who sends messages or friend requests that you do not wish to respond to.
In short, Facebook is a great site to socialize, stay updated with your friends’ lives, even when on the go or even from the comfort of your home.
About the author:
Claire Jarrett runs Marketing By Web, who offer Pay Per Click Advertising and AdWords Training