Just few years ago, calling yourself a member of an online community would have labeled you a “geek” or a weirdo (the word geek can replaced with nerd here, depending on your ex-high school). The “cool” kids at school would always point out that web – members are the unsocial, lonely, can’t-get -a -date, Star Wars-conventions’ enthusiast type of people. But in the past 2-3 years online social networking redefined that labeling. Ironically enough, with the increasing number of online network communities and the success of MySpace and Facebook, it is those with no active profiles on those communities are the ones to that seem to feel “out-casted” now.
Social networking can be traced back to its simplest form, emailing contacts. The more contacts you had, the more people you can reach when you forward a massage or a picture .The more people have your contact email, the more emails you will receive. Slowly and steadily, people become more accustomed to forums and chat rooms, participating and engaging in certain dedicated topics. But it was still not cool to go online and talk about your favorite video game, or movie, or fictional character or even sports. Chat rooms opened a new horizon in interacting with your friends, family and strangers. The cool kids used them to talk with each other about the cool stuff and even the bullies carried out their acts online. But until that point, yet it wasn’t socially accepted to say in school “I am Superboy5123 in the Superman Fans chat room”. Those geeks never gave up though; they might have hid it for a while, but never gave up on the habit. If we scroll down to 2008, it is virtually impossible to meet someone with an internet access who is not a member of an online community. From social networks’ members to individual bloggers, from casual surfers to hardcore developers, from teenagers to businessmen, the online social networking changed our daily life.
Few years ago, an average guy or a girl would run into a situation that he/she would consider and an interesting story to share, this person will contact his/her buddy and share that story and maybe over the weekend this story would be told again between a bigger larger group in the local bar or hangout. These days, an average blogger or community member will run into the same event, and the first thing that pops in his/her mind is blogging or posting it. Our online interaction with others became more and more the primary method of contact, with a single click you can share your story with a hundred people, whether they are interested or not. In real life, you wouldn’t walk to a person who is wearing the same shirt you are wearing and tell him “let’s be friends” (well only if you were 5, way before you get paranoid), but online you can pick any person you like and just click “add” and voila you just made a new friend. Although online socialization made it easier to get in contact with people you would never have the chance to meet personally, it also altered the definition of contacts and friends. Anyone can be friends with 4000 people on his network, can have a 1000 contact on his messenger, but in real life this same person can be someone you would never even consider befriending him. It is true, social networking might bring you more business, or new contacts that shares your interests, even traffic to your own profile or blog, and for some it might bring comfort and love. But social networking can also pave new roads to murders, thieves and rapists. In real life, you won’t go on a bus telling someone you suspect to be a criminal where you live or where you hangout, but in cyber world, sharing these information makes you more popular.
No one can deny the power of the internet, the good side and the dark side. The internet brought resources and information right to you computer screen. It made it easier to stay connected with your friends and family. It even gave you an outlet to express yourself without your world’s restrictions. But when you spend more time on making your online profile attractive rather than working on your real profile, then you’ve lost grabs on what is real and what’s not. When you take pride in your 1000 online contacts and never actually have couple of real friends in your life, then you’ve missed the point. When you would spend hours commenting on strangers’ blogs seeking popularity, yet never carry one good deed to a complete Stanger in your real life community, you are forgetting what being human really means. More and more questions and analyses can grow if you look deeper into this topic, but what I really need to know first starts from the surface:

Who won? Was it the geeks who turned the cool kids to their side, or was it the cool kids who took what the geek did and made it cool?