"Just don't give up on trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong."

"There’s a myth that time is money. In fact, time is more precious than money. It’s a nonrenewable resource. Once you’ve spent it, and if you’ve spent it badly, it’s gone forever."

— Neil Fiore: Author, speaker, and trainer on managing business

What is being won by spending time online?

Shortly after shots were heard on Virginia Tech’s campus, sophomore Katie Olsen logged onto her Facebook.com profile and started a new group in which she wrote “I’m Okay at VT.” After the deadliest school shooting in history took place, many groups were created on Facebook.com and Myspace.com to connect with friends, share feelings, and convey prayers and condolences to victims and their families. Following this tragedy, the general public became more aware of students’ interactions over the internet. Both Facebook.com and Myspace.com have become pervasive elements of many students’ lives, and students have gradually become very comfortable with the features and tools provided by these popular websites. Not only do Facebook.com and Myspace.com facilitate social networking, but they also help students develop their social identities, manage their relationships, and share messages via many original applications.

To begin with, Facebook.com and Myspace.com offer students an opportunity to develop their individuality in an online environment. Students create profiles including containing contact information, personal interests, schools attended, and professional experience. Their descriptions often include unique details that make the information interesting, evocative, and personal. This virtual image then helps students get better visibility, interact within communities of their peers, and may even improve their self-esteem. For example, Robert Kraut conducted a study about the effects of using the Internet on measures of social involvement and psychological well-being among Pittsburgh families in 2001. The study revealed that “extraverts” who were considered “heavy users” of the Internet stated they felt less isolation and pressure, and an increased sense of self-esteem than their “casual users” counterparts. Another study that analyzed the impact of Facebook.com on the development of romantic relationships showed that heavy users felt more attractive and confident than more casual users when using the website for dating purposes.

Furthermore, Facebook.com and Myspace.com provide forums for students to express their opinions on different subjects. For example, when students post comments about music, books, news, or any issue relevant to them, they can let the world know how they feel about something important in their lives. As a result, students are able to showcase a more sophisticated and enhanced identity before their social network. This incomplete list of examples suggests that Facebook.com and Myspace.com give students a way to express their inner selves.

In addition, Facebook.com and Myspace.com also help students manage their relationships. The large number of members registered on Myspace.com and Facebook.com, 135 million and 30 million respectively, permits students to either develop new relationships across time, or maintain existing relationships across distance with a large network of people. Upon registering, students can freely start to build their personal networks. Within these networks, students can add friends, family members, or acquaintances who live, study, or work near them. With the networks established, students may continue to maintain and develop social ties with their buddies over the web. For instance, while studying, students can employ their networks to stay in touch with their families, to poke fun at their friends, and to communicate with their classmates about courses or upcoming events. In addition, connecting with others based on their profiles, students can establish new ties not only within their immediate networks (e.g., friends of classmates, co-workers, etc.) but also new networks (i.e, when they join new groups in which they are interested, such as band fan pages, news forums, or sports/team pages).

Finally, Facebook.com and Myspace.com help students exchange messages within their networks using several creative applications. Simply, when students share messages about their interests, feelings, wonders, or intimate thoughts, they convey them not only through the traditional email format, but also through several other creative mediums. In particular, these websites let students employ various visual aids to compliment their communications and to share them in countless forms of online media. For example, on Facebook.com, students can employ the slideshows feature to share pictures with each other.  They can use “iLike” to show concerts they will be attending in the future The marketplace feature may be used to post free classified ads and exchange commercial messages. The video feature is a handy tool to easily send messages with moving video. The Poke feature offers a cool way to say “hello” to each others (i.e. when you poke someone, a poke icon will appear on his or her home page. Users can send virtual gifts with the gifts feature.  The status feature notifies users of their friends’ real-time activity on-line. The quotes feature allows users to share famous and meaningful quotes with each other. Students may also post text messages, comments or insights about their contacts on walls, which are visible spaces on each user’s profile page. Then, the message is instantly seen by the recipient and also to anyone who can see the profile.

As we have seen, Facebook.com and Myspace.com not only leverage the growth of social networking, but also help students build up their social identities, deal with human relationships, and share their thoughts and feelings via several new media features. Given the popularity of these sites among not only students but also the population at large, corporate giants like Microsoft and Amazon have begun developing web applications designed specifically for Facebook.com and MySpace.com. It is clear that these websites are changing the ways people manage their social lives, but are also continuing to revolutionize communication. To quote noted American author and motivational speaker Anthony Robbins, “The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives."

Jean-Marc Dedeyne

Gene Kavenoki

Reading/Writing 106.1

31 July, 2007