To infinity and beyond 2

[This was originally posted on my personal blog www.reachingperfection.com]

Pretty cliche title, eh? However, it holds nothing but truth when considered in the context of Social Networking. I covered in my last post what exactly social networking was and the very basics of why it could serve as a powerful tool. Let's look more in-depth of how it is used for games, news, Youtube videos, and pretty much everything.

Viral Effect

Hey bro have you seen the featured videos on Youtube yet? Dude you should check it out! I'm sure ALL of you have been through some sorta exchange like the one above. How many people offline do you socialize with about cool things that you see on the internet? Alright, so assuming that what you showed them was awesome, consider how many people each of them tell. Got that vision down? Now do it again. And again. You should have some sorta tree that branches out multiple times to more points that branches again. That cool video or article you showed your friend has now spread like a virus; exponentially growing its visibility over time. Now that's just with your offline friends. Check this out: That is a sample of that same "check this out" ordeal on Facebook. This is what you see on your Popular News and/or your Most Recent if you have me on your friends list. Now look at the bottom line and to the right... you see that "Share this" button? Now type in something enticing, cool, and awesome that makes people want to read it. And VIOLA!

I just infected all of my Facebook friends with that sweet article that some awesome dude posted yesterday ;). You can do the same on Twitter, just retweet anything that your friends post. Try it yourself my friend. Better yet share my article with your friends. Feel free to check out my profile on Facebook and Twitter (having a Twitter account makes me sad lol) and friend me if you aren't a friend of mine on those already. The viral effect is powerful, and I'm not afraid to use it. :P

Friendly Advice

Using social networking like this is more powerful than standard announcements on your site or other sites. Why? Because people trust their friends. If I met some guy in the hobby store buying Magic cards and he told me that there was some cool tournament going on over at another shop I would be kinda skeptical to show up. Now if one of my friends that play Magic with me tell me about this tournament and say they are going then I am MUCH more likely to head on out there.

Same goes for networks like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Friendster, etc; I am more likely to check out a news article with an ambiguous heading if my friends recommended it to me. And if they're sharing it with me, I'm sharing it with my other friends, and then so forth and so forth. So not only do you get that strong sense of trust between friends, you get the exponentially increasing "web" of friends that social networks provide. Sounds like a good deal to me.

Ending Discussion

Now that I've introduced you to the viral effect. I wanted to start this slightly related topic on Facebook vs Myspace. Myspace has died for the general public and now lives on typically for the more music centric crowd. Facebook has conquered the social networking ordeal over Myspace (let's not talk about Twitter yet). One of the main reasons I feel Facebook conquered over Myspace was because of the newsfeed and the ease of integrating the ability to post articles on your wall from all sorts of sites. That capability alone is something that I also feel will allow Facebook to carry on so strongly. So many websites are dependent on the Facebook society that if Facebook failed, then so would those websites. This network is what is going to keep Facebook strong... the same reason that Google is going to stay alive. So many things depend on Google now.

What are your feelings on the subject? Let me know... comment away my friends, let's get a good discussion going here.