Good evening again!
this is the Moment of Zen for this blog entry: Social Networks Online and Offline - in how far do they differ?
It is my personal opinion, maybe you have got another perspective on this, I would appreciate if you left a comment about your own view below my blog entry!
I use StudiVZ and facebook to get in contanct with people online, so there I can find my peers and they build my social network online. But what is interesting is that the people I have added as "friends" there differ completely! On StudiVZ I have got my friends from my former school, now from university, from sports clubs, other institutions from everyday life and so on, I think you can imagine. Of course some of them are there on facebook, but most of them are those who I met during my stay in Australia. Consequently one could say that I have got two social networks... one on studivz, one on facebook...
the problem is that facebook has not been that popluar in Germany as StudiVZ, but the interest in it grows exponentially. At the moment there are about 2.5 million German facebook users online.
What is as important is the following: I have got nearly 300 friends on StudiVZ and some of them I even do not really or speak to regularly! Why are they my friends there though? Does not make sense, does it? You know each other from seminars or something else and then you add this person as a friend on StudiVZ; out of these 300 I am in close contact with about 20 to 30 at most!
That is the difference between offline and online networks: one has got a whole load of friends online, but you do not get in close contact with most of them when being offline. It is easier to just write a short message online and see how anyone is going, but is thhis essential?? I don´t think so... friendships, if you want to call them that, can also find an end pretty easily if the other one does not reply to these messages!
I prefer the offline social network! What do you think?
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Hey:), I totally agree with your opinion. I use facebook to stay in contact with friends in Texas, even so I have the feeling that more and more of my friends in Germany use facebook. In my view studivz is kind of useful to stay in contact with friends from school, because everyone is studying in another city and it is sometimes hard to call everyone. Nevertheless, we shouldn't forget that a message on studivz really cannot be compared to a long comversation. I mean if you really want to know what is going on in your friends life, you have to call them right? A " hug( gruscheln" on studivz is just not the same as if you hug a friend in real life. Sometimes I wonder how many friends I have on studivz ( about 300) and than I question myself how many of these " virtual friends" are really important to me??
ReplyDeleteI prefer offline social network! Nice blog entry, see you in class.