News in Facebook

A lot of us, say in fact all of us are member of face-book now a days. It's almost an addiction for some people. Even I do pip at my notification bar and wall at least once in a day. And every time you log in to facebook, you will find a hoard of postings waiting for your view, comment, like or share. And almost 50% of them are news of some kind with a picture attached. And out of all these news only around 10-20% are nearer the truth. Half of them are completely made up, others are distorted and/or exaggerated information.

Inspite of  this, they spread like fire. Most of us just hit the share button without even verifying them once. And even if someone verifies and adds a comment, the comment is lost and the message forwarded unhindered.

Now there is something very deep to ponder over. With almost all news, and media being bought by politicians and capitalists, we are hard pressed to find real news with complete truth and no lies in them. And for this in recent times we are very much depending on social media. (Specially the people who spend half their day infront of their system). The biggest thing about social media is it is not bought by someone. It is you who is the reporter and most of the time common people speak the truth. Or at least by judging a few tens of post you can make out what is the truth and what is distorted/exaggerated with little bit or  common sense. May be that's why the government is trying to filter social media.

But what if the people start spreading rumors and distorted news like wild fire? The result is devastating. In most cases it drives people nuts with confusing information. And people start to lose faith in this powerful media. It is damn good for the politicians and capitalists, but really bad for public.

Facebook, Google Plus, Orkut, Twitter, Linkedin?

Yes, what? What are we gonna do with so many social networking sites? There was Facebook from a long time and twitter. Even before that we had MSN, Rediff and Yahoo chat rooms. Then came Orkut, and gained instant popularity almost killing the chat rooms, especially with Google talk. In fact Orkut was more used in India with FB and twitter only being used by a small population. Slowly we moved to Facebook and rest is history. We all know this. Now one after another social networking sites are entering the market. Everyday my mailbox has at least a couple of requests for joining some sites. The list is endless (By the way, here is the complete list of all social networking site) I never tried out most of them. In fact I only tried out Orkut, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn seriously. And now that Google+ enters my life, I'm divided over which should become my primary social networking site?

got this picture on the web, thanks to the source, whoever you may be :)

There are many who don't have this dilemma, as they are continuously here or there, but there are people like me who can't tolerate a massive reconstruction. I used to do Orkut in college just for fun. Later I just registered in Facebook to play the games they had (Mafia Wars and Farm Ville), for time pass in office. Soon the shift was complete as all my friends in Orkut followed suit. I hardly open Orkut now!!! I thought LinkedIn would help my professional growth, but alas I never could fully use it's features. Twitter at first seemed fun, but soon it got boring, since hardly a 20 people follow you! And now with Google+ I'm so confused.

It's true I love Google like a little more than my life!! I use everything of Google, Gmail, Google docs, Google Notebook (an obsolete product of Google labs), Blogger, Google Maps, igoogle, and so on and so on. But what good am I getting from Google+??? I know it's a lot like FB so problem in using it. A good amount of my friends seem to have joined it, (but hardly anyone is using it). So when it comes to Google plus versus Facebook, I'd tilt to FB. Just realized that no matter how good a social networking site may be, it of no use without a sizable amount of regular users. For now it seems Google+ has lost its purpose in India. Facebook thrives and I'm loving it. But the one question lingers in my mind, "Isn't Facebook too crowded with midless apps?" That may be the drowning factor for FB, if Google cashes on it.

Time to go to bed now. Thanks to whoever is reading this line for your patience with me :P
Good night :)