Let’s collect friends

Even if you managed to avoid Myspace, shunned Friendster like the plague and sniggered at people who joined Friends Reunited, there is virtually no doubt that you have succumbed to Facebook.

There are more than 4,500 people listed as living in Bahrain on Facebook – the online “social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them.”
The Facebook phenomenon is the latest in a burgeoning trend of online networking communities. Although social networking websites aren’t new, as a mass movement they have only recently come into their own – and Bahrain has embraced every one of them.
Of Myspace’s 100 million users, 3,000 are from Bahrain. Orkut, the Google-powered networking website lists 2,298 members from Bahrain while Hi5, the Yahoo network has over 1,500. Even the super-snobby invite-only networking website Asmallworld boasts no fewer than 208 members based in the kingdom.
Social networking websites are characterised by self-descriptive profiles featuring photos and personal information. The profiles include links to other members which creates a visible network of friends. While the sites allow people to make friends, it also enables people to display their connections and to join groups and networks.
Facebook added another level of visibility. Launched in 2004 by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook recently burst out of the university online arena to become a major challenger to Rupert Murdoch’s Myspace.
What makes Facebook so appealing is that automatic alerts, or news feeds, are issued so users can see not just whose friends with whom, but what their friends are up to on the site.
“Facebook has the benefits of Friends Reunited,” said Peter Elliott, a 28-year-old advertising executive living in Bahrain. “You can find people, but its not as complicated or maintenance heavy as Myspace and you don’t need to catch people on line like MSN because you can post things or see what your friends have been saying through the news feeds.
“As someone who lives away from their home country it does help to feel like you are still together with friends in all corners of the world. But everyone in Bahrain is on it because it is such a small closed community.
“Some people use it as a popularity contest. Because they have every application (which gets annoying) they are members of hundreds of groups and add someone as a friend even though they just said hi to them on the street.”
Facebook’s glaring visibility can have its downfalls, especially when it comes to affairs of the heart. 
“I blocked my ex on Facebook, so that he cannot see what I am doing,” said Stephanie Wright, 26, a personal assistant, “but my flatmate is still on his friend list so I can still see what he is up to. I’m not quite sure why I want to upset myself by having it rubbed in my face about how little I meant to him. It’s a little like poking a wound.”
Facebook has also been responsible for losing firms hours of work and in many corporations its use is forbidden.
Elli Marwood, 24, a recruitment consultant from Adliya said: “It helps me stay in touch with my friends at home and is easier to network with people than on the other sites such as Myspace. It’s very easy to use and has some great functions. But it can distract you from your work if you let it. We just make sure that we use sites like this during lunch hours only.”
Facebook may also follow a similar fate as Orkut which was recently banned in the UAE because of the sexual content found on the website.
Unlike the broadly egalitarian Myspace and Facebook which anyone can join, there are also exclusive networking websites such as Asmallworld. Founded by Erik Wachtmeister, a former investment banker and the son of Swedish Ambassador, Asmallworld is a community of global jet-setters which reportedly counts Naomi Campbell and Quentin Tarantino among its members. Harpers Bazaar described it as “an exclusive mix of business tycoons, American socialites, old-school family names, nouveau-riche newcomers and minor European royalty.”
Invitations to join can only be issued by selected members. Bad behaviour within the site can also have you expelled to ‘aBigWorld.’
Members are sternly warned not “not connect or send messages to people you do not know, unless you have a special reason to do so” and not to “accept connection requests from people you do not know, as this may dilute your network.”
But one of the benefits of such exclusionary smaller websites is that their members are mostly who they say they are.
Social networking websites have some serious dangers associated with them. Once the preserve of teenagers and people in the early 20s, now, more than half the registered users on Myspace are over 35, comScore Networks reported last year.
This means that children and adults mix freely online. The consumer watchdog Which? unearthed pornographic images, evidence of bullying and inappropriate adverts on Myspace and Bebo.
Posting personal information online can also leave the door open for predatory users to stalk members.
Two years ago Taylor Behl, a 17-year-old freshman at Virginia Commonwealth University, was sexually assaulted and brutally murdered after making a connection with someone on Myspace in an effort to make new friends online before starting university.
Director of IT Policy and Computer Policy at Cornell University, Tracy Mitrano, said: “Cyberspace can have the effect of creating an illusion of intimacy that could prove dangerous for you in reality. Use the manners and mores of behaviour in physical space both in how you present yourself and how you interpret other people online as a guide.”
Playful images of a Miss America contestant posted on Facebook landed her in a great deal of trouble, including an alleged blackmail attempt and the possible loss of her public role.
For Amy Polumbo is the current Miss New Jersey, an honour for which not only good looks but also perfect manners and a squeaky-clean reputation are requisite.
At the end of last week the national beauty pageant’s organisers decided to give Ms Polumbo the benefit of the doubt and allow her to keep her crown, after the photographs were published prominently in newspapers.
But the case has left behind some big questions about how teenagers are storing up problems for themselves in later life by exposing themselves – emotionally and in many cases physically – on the Internet.
Personal information posted online can also be abused by the authorities. The New Scientist recently discovered that the Pentagon’s National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. It’s important to remember that it’s not just you and your friends who are watching what’s going on online.
But despite its dangers, used properly websites like Facebook and Myspace can be great tools. 
“It’s incredible, I’ve recently been talking with one of my best friends from primary school that I haven’t been able to track down before,” said Elli. “It gives you a second chance to reconnect with people you thought you would never see again.”

By -RdS-
editor@gulfweekly.com