Likes, Comments, Retweets, Follow, block, tags- the things that matter.

Wake up in the morning –> search for your phone (under the pillow or to the table beside you) –> unlock it with the speed of lightening –> check for messages, mentions, notifications, likes, facebook, twitter –>  and now the day starts, Good morning world  :).

This is the age of social network!!!! Where, the morning starts with twittering (ironically not by the chirping of birds :)).

There was a green revolution, then sometime later a white revolution, internet revolution and wagaira wagaira. Each of the generation gets itself associated with some sort of tag along with it. The one thing, (if I may not call it a revolution as such) is the phenomenon of Social networking, which is what our generation is associated with. The era, where one has more “friends” in the virtual world then in the real. Wherever one sees, can find people FBing or tweeting. From making friends and connecting with the old ones, this has also become a platform for people to raise their voice regarding every other issue concerning the economy, world and themselves.

Every pic that has been captured where you look even a little decent (the definition of “little” of course changes for women 😛 ) is there on facebook. Every place that has been visited has to be checked in via foursquare. Every little thing you do gets tweeted. Some YouTube it, some tweet it, some pin it and no matter what. Everyone is On it.

The story of social networking does not end there, it actually starts.

Once a pic/post/video is updated, every comment or like, every retweet or mention, makes the story go forward. Our social-network-happiness-quotient is directly proportional with the increase in each of these activities. There is also a give and take relationship prevalent too, you like, I like.

Remember those Orkut days?? When the number of “scraps” used to define your status and half of your time used to get spent on adding friends from your friend’s friend-lists. Every cute picture or names used to make the arrow of the mouse go towards the “add as a friend” button. Everyone knew as to who visited your profile and so one had to extra careful. Not much is different in facebook too, the only fact was that the “stalking-frequency” is on the higher side as no one knows as to who visited the profile.

When one writes a blog, the exciting part, after completing it, is to see how many people actually read the stuff. Even when people give their feedback, whether they like it or not, gives the writer the encouragement to continue writing (now you know what to do after reading this 😛 ).

Most of the things that we do are done with the purpose of getting noticed and appreciated. People sometimes go overboard in doing this, yet each of us in some form or the other love to display our achievements. Social networking has also become somewhat like this, i.e. sharing your achievements for getting appreciation. It’s good to do things to get appreciated, but as they say, “too much of anything is bad” and hence overdoing this in both the worlds (real and virtual) calls for a slowdown. What is to be appreciated will get its due, if it’s worth it. One just has to wait. Some “intellectual users” even tag others in their pics so as to make sure that one just cannot ignore to “like” their posts/pics. They even make it a point to invite you to use the very “interesting” games/apps. Where in the real world will you find such lovely friends like these? (Seriously? 🙂 )

Too much philosophy, eh??

Well, that’s what some elitist-social-networking-gurus will tell you (yes, there are elites everywhere). The over-doers are termed Wannabes or despos or attention seekers (the twitterati has another term for all this, Orkutiyas). The thing is that each of these elites have also went through all this, but what’s gone is gone, now it’s all a different ball game for them.

So, what’s the way forward???

There is only one thing that should always be followed, “Never fake yourself”. If you really feel like sharing whatever you like, you do. If you like using one social network over the other, you do. Don’t get buoyed by other’s thoughts and actions and never blindly follow “trend”. Whether it’s the social network or the real, be just YOU!!!!