Continuing the social theme...

So...it doesn't seem to be a purely American-thing to be so into social networking. I see plenty of other countries represented. I guess it makes sense that Americans would be the most prolific since it started here. Facebook claimed 800 million active users, as of January 2012.

Facebook was founded to "rate" photos of people at Harvard. Kind of like the "Hot or Not" site, with one MAJOR difference. The Facebook founder hacked into Harvard's dorm records to upload photos without the person's permission. Hot or Not is based solely on voluntary posting.

So, you can see the site had a bit of a nefarious beginning.

I remember MySpace as being the site that started it all. MySpace was launched in 2003, Facebook in 2004. I am interested in what made Facebook pull so far ahead of MySpace, but I am more interested in people feeling the need to let the world know what they are doing.

I can't even write that last sentence without smiling at my own need to blog, post photos, and ensure the world knows what I am thinking or feeling about various topics. Why do we do this? What is the drive in humans that we need to exchange data? It's not even an exchange, but more that we want others to know about us. The very fact that we typically think of our next words as we are being addresses is indicative of where our concern is. Look at me! Let me tell you about ME!

It's all very interesting and I think I am going to have to do some research on this...