When I first managed to get involved in using the internet, I found the simple sites and necessary sites such as Hotmail, MSN, MySpace and Youtube. As I kept using the internet I got used to the way it worked but I felt no need to expand the websites that I used as it had no interest to me. I would login the Hotmail, MSN check emails, catch up with friends and edit my profile on MySpace. Today it hasn't really changed to some extent, as I use the same process of checking my emails, catching up with friends but now more websites have been introduced, I now use Facebook instead of using MySpace. MySpace was and still is a site which most people used to look up bands and make moderately interesting profiles to show off to over uses but you would never really have a conversation with anyone on there.
Facebook(a social networking site) was slowly introduced along side it and now it is the most popular social networking site on the internet. I think this is because it allows anyone to add anyone, have a conversation with friends from anywhere and using its applications to pretty much do anything. It is bringing a lot of people together, you are able to search for friends and in some rare cases you end up finding someone you haven't spoken to in years and reconnect with them.
They have many game applications which a lot of people use for boredom and a few of them have become quite popular to a point where non-Faacebook uses have heard of the 'indictions' to the game application. For example, there is a game application called Farmville, which I think no matter how long you have been on Facebook, you have used it at some point even if you never use it again. The game basically allows you to maintain your own farm, add neighbours and make coin to buy decorations for the farm. As well as game applications, they also have application where you can fill out quiz's and post your results on your profile page for other users to see and possibly then do the same.
I use quite a lot of the applications on a daily basis, however, I have started to use more of activities available on the site such as making events and groups. Facebook has progressed over the years and you are now able to make groups that anyone can join or make an event that anyone can go to. I have played about with this a lot recently, for example, making an event to go see the film Alice in Wonderland. I must admit, it was hard to get anyone to accept to the invite as I only wanted people I knew to be there and in the end we ended up not going. There are a lot more successful events, such as, the Cambridge Strawberry Fair which has 1,961 confirmed guests. This is has become quite useful, as for most of us, years ago we would have to make several phone calls to make an event but with Facebook, as long as you are friends with the people you want to invite, you can make the event and it can be sorted within minutes.
I think that Facebook has become the site that can't really do without. Generally I don't think I would be able to get on with my daily life without the internet. Social networking has become part of my daily routine and I think that without it, I wouldn't talk to as many people, I wouldn't have a lot to do most evenings and I wouldn't know much about what is going on. As Facebook has a message board as the 'homepage', where everyones status updates appear, I tend to see a lot of what they are up to and what is going on in the world outside of my life. I'm not really the kind of person that would watch the news and if anything serious, exciting or out of the ordinary has happened recently, it is bound to be in someone status at some point.
I would consider this site to be the one I am the most interested in and the one in which I could be considered an expert in. On the other hand, I don't really use many other sites, I chose not to and therefore I don't really think I would call myself an expert in any part of the web.
I think that the whole idea of Facebook is changing the way with live, these days I don't think people have much courage to just go out somewhere and make a random friend and they would just get the tiny thrill of adding someone random on Facebook who will hardly talk to you or lives on the other side of the world. I think that it has taken away some young adults social lives, of course we all still like to go out to bars and clubs, but I'll quite often sit online on a Friday night and wonder why myself and all my mates are online rather than going out on a Friday night. It may just be the expectations of our elders, as I was asked by my uncle the other day of why I was sat on Facebook on a Friday night rather than going out to get 'smashed'. When they were younger they didn't have the technology that we have today or the opportunities and I think that we may have got wrapped up in the wonders of the new technology, instead of taking up all the opportunities that are available to us.
For example, there may not be many jobs at the moment for students but when we get temporary jobs, we earn a lot more than students used to years ago. This gives us the opportunities to go out with the extra money with have, there are more bars and clubs and it is much more acceptable for students(over 18) to go out to have a laugh. More students are able to get through college and be able to go to university than they used to years ago and being there adds more socialising, which comes with university life.
The whole concept that if you have internet access you can be on Facebook when ever you want has become a profit to phone companies. Since most phones have now the internet available on them, apps are also available to use and they made, a now common, app for Facebook. This now means that anyone with the right technology and with the app, can now go online where ever and when ever they want. For the unlucky few who have the 'addiction' to Facebook, for example, then spend most of their time with their iPhone out, updating their status on Facebook. It now very easy for people to get addicted to the internet and its sites available and now we have other ways to get to it, rather than a computer, we now spend the majority of our day glued to these sites.
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