Social Networking Sites: Which ones do you have?

The world just got smaller since the birth of FRIENDSTER, FACEBOOK, TWITTER, MULTIPLY, MYSPACE and other social networking sites that connected families, classmates, former lovers and friends. And in an effort to catch up with all these important people in my life, I first befriended Friendster, then I got an invite to Multiply, then showed my face in Facebook and the latest addition, tweeted my life on Twitter. Allow me to share with you what I really think about these sites.

Let's begin with FRIENDSTER. I got a ton of invites to connect with friends on Friendster. My former students were sending me invites everyday until one day, I signed up for an account. What I like Friendster at first is that it is was like an online resume. I got to see who was visiting my profile, connect with 500 friends (which was later increased, darn it, I had to create a new account 'cause I thought I reached the limit), showcase my pictures on a single album (later improved to have more than one album), customize my profile page with music, video, change the background and colors with CSS and feature my friends on a single page. Too bad, the improvements were slow, people got bored and so people started to move to other SNS.

Enter FACEBOOK. Facebook is very similar to Friendster. Only better. The interface is easier to understand, the layout is easy on the eyes, adding up friends was easier, online chatting, supported more applications, requests are summarized which can be customized and of course, the never-ending games, quizzes and newsfeeds! I love the photo-tagging feature, that by tagging a photo, it automatically appears on the tagged-person's album, no more reuploading! Although there was a major thumbs - down on their policy on photos, but I think they were able to solve it already (I hope, but still, I don't really trust fineprints so most of my photos are still hosted in other sites.) Aside from Facebook's photo policy, what I don't really like is that my profile page isn't customizable. It's the same as everyone else's. I can't express my individuality (well maybe in pictures na lang). Although almost everybody is in Facebook, I still maintain one more site for everything that I want to share the world.

Go and MULTIPLY! This by far is my favorite of the Social Networking Sites. Why you ask? First, it is fully customizable, although the Multiply logo may appear on all sites, but the banner, the arrangement of the boxes and the text colors are fully customizable. It may pass as a personal website if I may say. Second, it allows you to sell stuff. Online shopping has never been more alive! Better than e-bay! Third, music, photos and videos can also be posted or embeded and not necessarily be hosted in Multiply. Sharing can be done on a different levels of relationship; sharing can be limited to colleagues, friends, family, specific individuals or share it with everybody, even people not on multiply! Entries on Multiply can also be posted/linked on Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo! If not for Multiply 4.0, this site would have been enough for me, but since its deployment, I found it slow and a little bit more difficult in the eyes. The interface got a little confusing. haha! I also do not understand the Media Locker and Autouploader features. Maybe I'm just too lazy to read on about this feature so I opted not to use 'em at all! hahaha!

Tweeeeeeting on Twitter!!!!! Twitter is the ultimate stalker/conceited-friendly site! You get to choose who you follow, and if people found you interesting, they'll start following you. You get to inform other people what you are currently doing, will be doing or have done. If you are basically uninterested in other people's business, I advise you not to sign up with this site. It allows you to tweet messages 140 characters long so if you're going to share a video, photo, blog or any other site, use URL shorteners such as bit.ly or tinyurl.com. If you want to be entertained, follow people who are friends even outside of twitter, their tweets are really interesting even funny at times. But that's all you get from Twitter, short messages of what's going on with their lives, another site will still be needed to host photos, music, video, blogs and the like.

So there. I don't have a Myspace account so I really can't say anything about it. All I have are these four. Take your pick. Add me up. Social networking sites are here to stay. Let's wait for the next fad and who knows, the next one may combine all the good qualities of the aforementioned sites. Go ahead, be a FRIENDSTER, add up and MULTIPLY, paste your face on FACEBOOK and tweet on Twitter! The world just became smaller!