Houlton High Times editor
In the past three years, the Internet has been taken over by a new kind of Web site. Social networking sites have started popping up everywhere and people are flocking to them. Sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Tagged have become wildly popular with people of all ages. While it seems that most of these sites are based around and populated primarily by kids, it is actually the adult population that has bigger numbers on these sites. Just over 50 percent of MySpace users are 35 and older while 30 percent of Facebook users are 30 or above.
MySpace is definitely the most mainstream of all these social networks. Facebook, while not quite as popular, has been around longer and has been the best known and most commonly used by college students. It seems to be the trend for a young person to start with MySpace, which seems adolescent and recognized by younger ages because of its colorful and creative look.
One big problem with MySpace is that people tend to get irritated with the “top friends,” where you can rank your four, eight or 16 friends. “Top Friends” seems to add a popularity contest feel and often causes more high school drama than needed. That drama is one of the big things Facebook users were trying to avoid. Last summer, however, Facebook took a turn for the worse and added a “top friends” application. While it is very easy to avoid, it still seemed to annoy people that it was even there at all.
“I wish that they would send all the new applications to Hades,” suggests Facebook user Sebastian Berry.
Just when users were beginning to get over the disappointment in the new application, a flood of new applications seemed to drown every Facebook users’ profile. New applications such as Zombies, Fish Tanks, Booze Mail, along with seemingly over 900 others have been added to make Facebook look more mainstream, like MySpace. This has angered many of the Facebook users who seem to appreciate a few of the new applications, but feel overwhelmed when the log on and see they are invited to add eight new applications a day.
While these new applications are extremely annoying, people haven’t seemed to turn away from using Facebook. Some users enjoy having a few of these applications, but most would agree that Facebook creators have gone over the top, making more applications in the last three months than in the past three years.
It seems as though Facebook users will have to cope with the fact that their site is slowly becoming the more creative, colorful, childish network which they had tried to avoid.
The best way to avoid dealing with the new annoyances of your favorite social network: turn off your computer and do something that’s actually social.
