The way of the world is meeting people through other people.

Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace have literally exploded in a matter of just a few years!! Innovative new technologies provide great benefits,however, they also bring about a significant change in the way we live our lives. Consider this, air conditioning makes our life really comfortable, but people born before its invention would rather rate their experience of sitting with their friends and family on the front porch and share their feelings while enjoying the natural breeze much higher as compared to staying indoors to stay cool and watch TV.

Social networking has made significant changes to the way we live our lives...but it does come across with a lot of responsibilities of how we deal with it...

I'll try and not make it a Positive V/s Negative aspect of the online bubble created by the different social network sites, however, would rather want to look at how it can be used to the full potential and make optimum utilisation to our benefits!!

It can be considered to be a boon when it comes to establishing new relations on a personal and professional level, maintaining a sought after contact list, sharing similar thoughts with a community, as well as to develop romantic relationships. Advertising products and services on the online front has taken a new leap and innovations are being made everyday to get the desired "in-your-face" ads to make you sit up and take notice. Sales have taken social networking very seriously and considered it to be a very integral part of today's means of marketing....

As with life, nothing in this universe is supposed to be perfect, there's some sort of 'room for improvement' factor looming at the next curve...the short attention span of the average consumer is always a factor when it comes to serving something new while maintaining the same standards throughout. With social networking, there are still these loopholes which stand out and require a certain amount of attention.

There's abundant availability of abuse of the available services. Sharing can take a dangerous turn when not handled correctly; examples could be gossip and rumours, which in a lot of cases might not be true!! Other examples include suicides induced by misuse of information and hate mails... It gets even graver when social networking becomes the sole dependancy for an individual to interact with friends and family. Personal contact becomes a rare phenomenon and could lead to stress and anxiety.

Sitting on a couch all day long in front of a PC waiting for "friends", on their walls and tweets, just isnt the same as sharing a meal with them at a picnic or at a birthday party...

As I mentioned earlier, this is not supposed to be a debate about networking online being good or bad; it is about understanding that all new things require filtration. And filter, it will, over time the negatives will move out once we understand how to use it to our advantage.

Till then, Caution leads to more optimistic and better understanding of our own SPACE!!

Cheers!!