MANISHA SINGH, TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Networking and expression — that sums up most of the activity that’s done on the internet today. It’s no more just an information powerhouse. And if the increasing number of social networking sites marks the former, the growing number of blogs across the webspace confirms the latter. Blogs, which till a couple of years ago were assumed to be something meant only for the geeks, have now become mainstream. And social networking sites like MySpace, YouTube and Facebook have been the outstanding success stories of 2006. Why else would Google buy YouTube for $1.65 billion?

In fact, one high point of internet in 2006 has been the rise of social networking sites. There was a strong growth in existing web 2.0 networks like Flickr and del.icio.us. Google’s Orkut too is a hot favourite among youngsters: Over 100,000 users within 48 hours of launch, while MySpace has over 125,000,000 users. It’s so, so hot that we now have close to a dozen social networking sites focused on India: yaari.com, minglebox.com, zhoom.com, DesiMartini.com and humsubka.com, to name a few.

OSA Editorial Comments:

As we watched the Friday Night Special edition of 20/20, called [Caught]! Watch this short video clip. The show was all about how we are giving way our rights for privacy, whether we know it or not. Especially with advent or digital videos and camcorders and video cell phones and ease at which we can upload to the internet makes it possible to see something and recorded in the morning have go around the world during the day and be in all the headlines by evening news and old hat by midnight….The Death of Privacy.

Your Online Security Authority
Bill Wardell

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