Social Networking

They say with the invention of the wide bodied passenger aircraft, the world has become a smaller place. Surely, the man who said this wasn’t counting on the emergence of the Internet.

Although one cannot achieve face to face communication for this to be really true, the internet has enabled people from all around the congregate at a virtual place and interact with one another, without any borders and boundaries. Of course, this is not a new concept. Electronic BBSs have been around since the late eighties, letting people communicate with others in a near real time fashion. As high speed internet started making its way to the man on the street, more and more kinds of social networking software and websites began to sprout up on the Internet.

mIRC, ICQ, MSN Messenger and Skype are all very good examples for networking software that have changed the landscape of the Internet since their inception.

mIRC was the first software that allowed people all over the world to talk to each other in chat rooms. The biggest draw was the fact that it used simple text and not fancy file types that would cause the user’s connection to slow down. ICQ was considered to be the first widely-used instant messenging program. Like IRC, it used text as well but what made it so different was the fact that one could add others onto contact lists and maintain contact at all times.

Microsoft’s own Messenger took IM to a whole new level in terms of market penetration, using their near monopoly in the operating system and browser sectors to help spread the use of their programme. Lastly, Skype is perhaps one of the revolutionary social netwokring programs. No longer would people be limited to using only text to communicate over the Internet or skippy video conferencing. Thanks to high speed Internet, real time voice communication was now possible. As the technology continues to be refined, one can expect Skype and VOIP to replace land lines in the new future.