Facebook, Orkut, social networking, and 'the pests'

There's a new kinda breed.... the Social Networking Pest.
Of late, I have been come into contact with this very kind.
Earlier, on Orkut, it was easy to weed out the ones from amongst the e-friends who seemed to have a different agenda altogether - but, now, on many a socially networking site online, especially on Facebook, these very people are likely to have a brush with the users, and the experience can be anything between mildly unpleasant to grossly obnoxious.
It's an irritating phenomenon - these people just want to get on your nerves in the guise of e-friendship, they want to get unnaturally intimate, they judge you, they pester you like nuts!
You would wonder, 'What have I done to deserve this!'
Omigosh! They try to contact you at every single pretext with the sole objective of disturbing you emotionally, maybe they want you to join them in their psychologically dysfunctional tirades. You are asked all kinds of silly things. Every attempt to ignore them makes them even more desperate. They keep posting ridiculous stuff on your wall, or as messages, mail you spam content, and if, God forbid, they get hold of your cellphone number, they'd bombard you with messages. Do they all suffer from Attention Deficiency Disorder? That's what you'd wonder. You'd try to block these irritating creatures, but such attempts would turn futile as they'd soon be found to resurface under some other garb, on some phoney profile, and, worse still, they might get really nasty and revengeful and even attempt to hack your account.
In the recent past, Facebook has been taking, or trying to take, stringent measures against these pests, many improved features and filters have come up whereby one can have special privacy settings, and there's now a more active supervision by the authorities. I commend them for that. And I hope that we may curb the pest syndrome soon, very soon.
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PostScript: Let me inform the ones who do not know me that they are welcome to be my e-friends; in fact, all - but the pests - are welcome to join me on Facebook too. The list of my e-friends on Orkut have become too large and hence I am not very eager to accept new friends there, it becomes difficult to interact with a very large number of friends, you see. Hence, all you have to do to be my e-friend is too click on the link below and send me a friend request, or message me..... e-friendship is healthy, it's an absolute pleasure for me to buzz with you on an array of subjects, just make sure that it isn't inappropriate, crossing the norms of social decorum and courtesy, and that our online exchanges doesn't make either of us uncomfortable in any way.
Anindo Sen

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TWEET-mania

Twitter has been voted last year as the most popular word by Global Language Monitor.
It actually means, as a verb, to utter a succession of tremulous sounds or to talk rapidly of trivial matters. But, of late, it refers to the popular social networking site (http://twitter.com) used by millions worldwide.

In the course of a year, registered Twitter accounts have reportedly grown more than 1,500 per cent and the Twitter team of professionals has grown 500 per cent. In today's times, it is no mean feat!


Apart from the regular, full-time employees working at the Twitter offices, there are thousands of dedicated platform developers who have now created more than 70,000 registered Twitter applications creating variety and utility for all.
I salute the dedicated professionals who have been responsible for the incredible success of the website. My blogpost also is in celebration of the gathering of such individuals this spring at 'Chirp', the first ever official Twitter developer conference.

When I had joined Twitter, I remember doing so out of sheer curiosity. Already it was having a roaring fanbase. I was intrigued by the fact that the highest celebrity status was enjoyed in Twitterdom by Ashton Kutcher, thanks to his outpourings followed by a mindbogglingly wide range of people from all over!

What I like about Twitter:
It is free, like most of the social networking sites that enjoy immense popularity online.
It offers microblogging services, enabling its users to send and read messages known as tweets. For the uninitiated: tweets are the text-based posts (of up to 140 characters); the tweets are displayed on the author's profile page and are delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access.

Some Interesting Facts About Twitter:

*The 7 billion tweets to date are composed of 104,860,000,000 words!

*This time last year, i.e. in February 2009, adults aged 35-49 years had the largest representation on Twitter – almost 3 million unique visitors from this age group, which is 42 per cent of the entire contributors of Tweets!

*5% of all Twitter accounts create 75% of all tweets; now that is weird, but interesting!

*The cool, new features of note that make Twitter even more attractive are the inclusion of list creation, easy & faster spread information with a retweet button, and an easier way to activate one's mobile phone to work with Twitter over SMS.

*We are also lucky to be offered a new mobile website that looks and works much better on smart phones.


Happy tweet-ing, folks!



Follow me HERE: http://twitter.com/sakagaze