Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Welcome to Quickfriendship.com - Online Social networking, Connecting with Friends, Chatting, Sharing with Friends


Online social networks, refers to a group of people using the internet with one common goal on their horizon or rather with an intention of satisfying a particular need. When a person decides to be a member of a particular social network, then they have a desire of sharing what the other people in that network have be it business, bridging, bonding or support from the other members of the group. In short a person will join a specific social network according to his or her interests (De Jonghe pgs 155-167). Most of the social networks are web-based and thus, the means by which the internet is accessed will not matter at all. One may access the web using a blackberry, cell phone, laptop or desktop computer.
The people in online social networks will either use e-mail, telephone calls, chat room and or instant messaging to communicate. A human being is a social being that is why the internet and such social networks prove to be important to the internet users who opt for the social sites as a way to socialize and bond their strong ties. With the fall of the society norms and ethics, the internet provides a good escape route for human beings looking to get entertained and satisfied in different aspects of their life. For other users, the social networks may not be a tool for entertainment but a source of information in case of the informative online social network like yahoo, quickfriendship that will give latest technologies and news or modelmayhem.com which offers business advices.
A research conducted by Hargatti showed that in the social networks, there are always the undistinguishable classes of demography. The online social network services will always contain a particular identity that will distinguish people in a particular social network. That is why the famous social networks of Quickfriendship,facebook and twitter will have classmates in campus or former classmates from a certain high school as friends and discussing things that are common to their ways of life, status, age and education (Steinfield et-al). There are the social networks that cut across the board and those that will be limited to a certain region of the world; Facebook and twitter are famous for cutting across the globe. Other social networks like Quickfriendship.com,  LinkedIn and MySpace will be very famous in North America only.
According to Hargatti’s study, all social networks will be defined by their demographic class. Twitter, Quickfriendship and Facebook will attract higher class demography as compared to a social network like MySpace which will be targeted mostly the lower demography. This is because, 60% of the people that one communicates to in any social network site are at least people they have met and interacted face-to face; from this, one will determine the demographic class that he or she will identify himself with. An individual will join specific social networks with an aim of self disclosure, instigating relationships through the net and other common interest like sports especially football.
Means by which one communicates online
What crosses the minds of many people when somebody mentions communicating online is e-mail and e-mail address. But the truth is that there are different ways in which an internet user may communicate apart from the e-mail. First of all it’s important to look into the use logistics and importance of the e-mail. When communication through the e-mail was introduced, its main aim was to allow easier communication between friends in different parts of the world; but with time, the importance of the e-mail has grown tremendously (Steinkuehler).
With the current technology, if a manager wants to convene the staff for a meeting in a particular company, he or she may opt to send a memo using the e-mail for convenience and faster communication. That means, the use of the e-mail has now taken a more formal dimension and in fact more official communication are done through the e-mail. If we take another example, we can identify the important part that the e-mails did during the campaign in the 2008 presidential election. The campaign managers of specific candidates made sure that bulk messages were send to the uses of e-mail systems like hotmail, Gmail and yahoo as a way of campaigning to the presidential candidates from the preliminaries elections to the general election (Ellison and Boyd).
At the moment, the e-mails sent are beyond the sender’s or recipient’s ability to control. The internet networks that the messages may be passed through is beyond there control. This means that even though a social  networker may opt for a certain network because of personal reasons, he or she will find himself connected to other networks that he or she did not have in mind from the beginning (Shih pgs 76-98).
In certain organization where the mails never leave the organization, then such mails can be considered safe. These are termed as the internal mail systems and are considered the safest in the current world of technology which has an increasing number of the so-called system hackers. With an IT specialist in a company, then the mails movement and the important documents including photos will definitely be in safe custody (Knoke pgs 120-132). In such a connected system then it will be easier for the e-mails to be send to addresses that are more than one.
Other Means of communication
Live chat sites have grown recently with many of the online social network users preferring them as compared to the online messaging. Thus most of the online communicating systems have opted to introduce the live chat in there system to make the users more comfortable. When one visits a social network system like yahoo, quickfriendship the first thing that he or she is informed of is the number of his or her friends that are online at that time.
With time, the usage of internet telephony has also been rising even though not many have embraced this technology. There is the common protocol that has been controlling all the communication online using the telephone and it is referred to as VoIP, voice-over-Internet Protocol. This idea has not been there for along time because it was put into place around early 1990s (Carrington 243-256). This was introduced after some people decided to use their walkie-talkies on their computers. Thus as time moved on, many VoIP systems have cropped up and made communication easier through the internet telephony just like one will use the traditional telephone.
The advantage that will be associated with this service is that, it is more clear if one has a good network reception and to add unto that, this type of communication is easier and cheaper especially to a person passing a message to somebody through a very long distance. Thus the provision of the VoIP has brought a new communication competition in the market with different internet telephony systems trying to provide the service to the users. But the problem with this is implementing it in the less developed countries and in areas where the network systems are not well advanced.
People one communicates with through social networks
Recent studies show that there is a tremendous increase in the number of internet users with the men the most frequent visitors of the social networks averaging 81% compared to the women’s 77%. Young people are the most frequent users of the social networks putting in mind their urge and desire to learn and discover new things. With the emergency of Quickfriendship,Facebook and Twitter, the number of young people online has increased to around 92% with those between ages 16-20 forming the majority.
Social network site usually give one the chance to communicate to friends that they had met or talked sometime before and those they have at that moment. This is because of the bare fact that the social network sites give the user a means of searching for friends by name or e-mail. For a student in the University, the type of friends that he or she has will definitely comprise the former high school friends, friends they grew up together in the neighborhood and classmates in campus.
My Social Network – Quickfriendship
I have been a member of Facebook for the last three years and I have never regretted joining this social network site. Nobody will ever care if I wrote a nasty thing on the wall of one of my friends; the most important thing is the social capital that is created through such a communication. What another girl reading this creates in her head will determine if she will want to know more about me or will be put off. Thus, there are two important things that made me to join Quickfriendship.com; it was to the bare fact that I want to look cool and make my friends sound cool. One will argue that Quickfriendship.com is a network with the sole aim of connecting people, but for a committed user like me, it is a platform where social capital are formed and distributed.
There are different groups on Quickfriendship.com which are the result of one or two people’s idea. A good example is what my friend Friedel came up with last month; he formed a group to support the fight against global warming and he called it “Let’s support Copenhagen”. The group has now more than 1000 users and is a good way of showing that the people on Quickfriendship care much about environmental conservation. With the increasing number of young investors in stock markets, the need for social networks is on the increase and that is why Facebook plays a very important role in doing this. Users will make sure they are online to check the latest trends and possible investments in such networks.
Quickfriendship has applications that allow one to superpoke, send birthday wishes, special friend message and other special gifts. As we all know, a gift send from a young man to his girlfriend will not carry enough weight compared to if the young man tells his friends to send gifts or birthday wishes to his girlfriend. The girl will feel so much loved and more secure in public because the man puts it clear in public they are in a relationship. Creating and distributing social capital is so much important and as a loyal Facebook user I think this is what the Quickfriendship.com CEO IH Tapadar should be concentrating on, bringing applications that will enhance social capital.
Social Capital shared through internet
When a certain economical entity or idea is shared among people connected in a network then this may be termed as Social capital. The things shared through the net depend on the different parties involved (Marshall 56-78). With the increase in internet users, the explicit support groups have also come up with the intention of satisfying internet user’s sexual needs.
That is why a person in Quickfriendship  will go into the network with the aim of getting into an intimate relationship be it a romantic or friendship but a company CEO will join a social network site with a business intention of marketing. Big companies have realized that advertising through the internet is one of the cheapest ways of introducing their products to the customers; this is termed as e-commerce. This type of marketing is the fastest way of making sure that business information is passed in faster way (Williams).
How social capital is distributed on Quickfriendship.com
On Quickfriendship social capital is distributed by either sending one a message in the inbox, writing on the person’s ‘wall’ or commenting on the person’s status. In some cases, the social capital may be distributed in a better way through groups that are formed in social networks like Quickfriendship. The group will involve people with similar interest like supporters of a particular premier football club; for example as an Arsenal supporter I will join a group that has Arsenal supporters. Social capital gives one the chance to measure the benefits that come out of social interaction e.g. emotional support, new ideas and access to non-redundant information. Then it is clear that in a network like Quickfriendship.com the outcome may be positive or negative and the information shared will be either constructive or destructive.
The concepts of social capital are in two forms that are basic; they include bonding and bridging. For bonding social capital, it allows a connection among people that have close personal relationship. Such people will share emotional support, physical and other benefits. It is a fact that people that meet on a certain social network will never develop close relationship compared to people that had met earlier before the social network bringing then together. Bridging social capital even though not that close and effective, will be of so much benefit to those involved. It includes friends that have no close ties and have met on the network for the first time. Bridging social capital lead to weak ties, but the advantage is that the parties involved will have some information that the other doesn’t have. This social capital will help the people willing to change jobs, buying a lap-top or phone or rather new health information.
In conclusion, for every strong tie, there are weak ties; the social network sites have led to parents and teachers complaining about the drop in the social and cultural contexts especially in countries where culture is still strictly observed (Lewis 289-300). Many of social network sites users have succumbed to peer pressure and have changed their morals due to the frequent access of these sites. Many relationships have also been broken due to the messages and updates that have been posted on the wall of one party of the couple.