MY ENCOUNTERS WITH SOCIAL NETWORK

I became a techno freak soon after the day in early summer of 2007 when bsnl sent me a message "enjoy 200 mb free gprs" to activate sms  GPRS250 to 52525".  I was so excited and happy to know that free internet gprs for month. So i sent the sms and after checking my balance i came to know that GPRS250 means you are damn paying 250 from your balance to acitivate the pack of 200 mb?? i was shocked, i mean 250 rupees does mean a lot of balance and hello i am talking about some 7 years back, jab half of the nation doesnt even knew what is GPRS! it was really a big hole in my pocket, and chalo jab activate ho hi gaya hai, then we have to use it. To explore the fantacy world of GPRS the first thing you could do with a gprs enabled mobile phone in 2007 is go to "ORKUT".

Orkut was the most happening thing that time, people used to go internet cafes to check out orkut and you had some 400 friends and you barely knew 50 of them! The fight was who had more scraps in their scrapbooks! If you had more then 1000 scraps then you are considered "something". Meanwhile many social sites such as BIGADDA, IBIBO, MYSPACE did called my attention but not for long. Orkut became the coolest thing, when you have to show off, the statement "ARE YOU IN ORKUT?" was enough, and then all you have to say is "oh gosh! don tell me you don't know about orkut!", "are you serious? you never heard orkut?" and like viruses the orkut profiles started dividing itself and soon the whole world was in orkut,  Then we started reading articles about FACEBOOK VS MYSPACE. It was all over the gizmo world, Facebook or Myspace was the future. And i thought o really? I typed WWW.FACEBOOK.COM in the internet explorer "about:blank" place( these days people forgotten that there was something called internet explorer, everyone loves google chrome) and there was this page asking me to sign in if i am and existing user or to create an account because its FREE. I filled all the requirements they asked me to but with a wrong date of birth (ofcourse). They asked me if i am sure that my age is above 18 i said yes and enter, they say welcome to facebook , edit you profile, about me: now this is really irritating, about me?? come on every person on earth thinks he/she is right and good and intelligent and smart, and you are asking me to write about me?? and then i did what 99.99 % people do while creating or filling their "about me" section .GOOGLE. Yes.. and after surfing through few interesting  “about meeess” though cool but i chose to leave the ‘about me’ section blank.This time i was serious about adding friends, i did added but only people i knew, i had a profile picture of a celebrity like everyone used to, because people thought if you put your original pic some con may download your pic and use somewhere. Very soon people started adding original pics in their profile pictures and that gave me courage to add mines to.. Now the search starts for your best picture to date. See, you have to be very concious about profile pic, because only your friends can see your ‘albums’ but everyone can see the profile pic, and after some good scan of all your pics you definatly find that ‘one’ pic perfect to become the’ facebook profile picture’ . And the best part , after uploading your pic for the first time you start checking your facebook profile 6 to 10 times a day to see any new comment or like to your pic! And things like poking, farmville, tagging, keeps you entertained in this facinating world of facebook, one day you find that one friend you lost in touch.. years back.. i was shocked that this social networking thing can literally make you cry out of joy, it has the capability to keep you in touch with people you almost forgot they existed and who were most important people of your life at some point of time. Janani, my best friend from school days.. we used to barely talk on phones, infact only on our birthdays!! Facebook gave me not only janani but many other friends whom i just forgotten! Today FB has become part of our lives, don’t you think so? I mean you share your happiest and saddest moment with FB, now we express ourselves so much than we ever did! From chatting to online friends, to poking your friend , or checking out pictures of your school friends and thinking "gosh, they have changed so much", or tagging all your friends to a stupid picture and ofcourse updating your status!! I reall really am very thankful to FACEBOOK. THANKS.