Do you Tweet, Plurk, Digg, or StumbleUpon? To an aging Baby Boomer these may seem to point to bodily malfunctions. However, these terms are part and parcel of social networking and personal sharing sites that are prevalent on the web today. Beyond those that are listed below are various specialized sites that target a particular group of individuals.
Where do we as Baby Boomers fit into the growing phenomenon of social network sites? If we have spent any time at all on the internet we will have come across such terms as Linkedin, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Plurk, and many other specialized personal sharing sites such as Flickr, Digg, and StumbleUpon.
The share of adult Internet users who have a profile on an online social network site has more than quadrupled in the past four years — from 8% in 2005 to 35% now, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project’s December 2008 tracking survey. 19% of Baby Boomer on line users between the ages of 45 and 54 have at least one online profile, 10% between the ages of 55 and 64 have a profile, and 7% of Baby Boomer online users age 65 and over have a profile on at least one social networking site.
The growth of these social sites has been phenomenal. Back in February of 2005, just 8% of adult internet users had used a social network site. That percentage had risen to 16% by August of 2006, and as of December 2008 stands at 35% of online adults. Boomers seem to be playing a larger role in this growth. I’m sure future sociologists will have a field day trying to figure out why we respond to digital things the way we do.
Of the popular personal social networking sites, MySpace appears to be the first one on the scene having been launched in August 2003. According to Wickipedia“MySpace is a social networking website with an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music, and videos for teenagers and adults internationally. In June 2006, MySpace was the mot popular social networking sie in the United States. MySpace was overtaken internationally by Facebook in April 2008″.
On the professional side, LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site launched in May 2003 an is used by more than 30 million registered users for professional networking.
Facebook is a popular, free-access social networking website. Members can connect and interact with other members, add friends, send messages, and update their personal profile. Originally membership was limited to Harvard University students and later expanded to other colleges. Today it is available to virtually anyone over the age of 13 with over 150 million active users worldwide.
In 2006, along came Twitter, a free social-networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users updates (tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Updates are posted on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users that have signed up to “follow” to poster. Users can receive tweets by various means, including RSS feeds and email.
One of the newer players on the scene is Plurk, a free social networking and micro-blogging service launched in May 2008 that allows users to send updates (plurks) through short messages or links, which can be up to 140 text characters in length. Updates are shown on the user’s home page using a timeline which lists all the updates received in chronological order and delivered to those who have signed up to receive them by instant messaging or text messaging. the Plurk website identifies it as being a social journal.
Rocking Chair Wisdom will share more about some of the personal sharing sites in a later post.
Have you had experiences with social networking sites? If so, would you be willing to share on which site you have a profile, why you decided to join, and how often you participate on the site? Leave a comment or email us directly at RockingChairWisdom@gmail.com. If you email, please let us know if we can use your comments in a future posting.
Tags: baby boomers. Rocking Chair Wisdom, personal sharing, Social Networking
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