More than love on cyber offer

LONDON – Social networking Web sites, once known solely as a way to find dates online, are offering more than love – if you can make it past the virtual velvet rope.

Here’s how it works: You post a brief personal profile and photo online, and the social networking software connects you to your friends, their friends, and your friends’ friends’ friends — the “six degrees of separation” effect. Friendster (http://www.friendster.com), known for its lively online pick-up scene despite its platonic name, was the first service to bring online social networking to the masses.But an emerging group of services go beyond trying to kindle the romantic flames.They include:– LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com), a business networking site that invites users to post resume information and other professional details.– Tribe.net (http://www.tribe.net), designed for “affinity groups” from fans of the rock band Mars Volta to alumni of San Jose State University in California.– MeetUp (http://www.meetup.com), created to help organise events among people with similar interests, played a major role in the now-defunct campaign of US Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean.ARE YOU COOL? The social network currently garnering the most hype among the Internet cognoscenti is Orkut, a multipurpose site owned by the powerhouse search engine Google that encompasses business and hobbies as well as romance.Aside from the cachet of Google, Orkut (http://orkut.com) also has a secret weapon in the battle for supremacy among social networking sites, familiar to anyone who has queued outside a hot disco or tried to join a private club: Exclusivity.Unlike most sites, Orkut isn’t open to just anyone.You must be asked to join by an existing member.Once – or if – an invitation arrives in your inbox, Orkut asks for a wide range of information (all optional) from how much you smoke and what can be found in your bedroom, to where you work and what university degrees you hold.That confluence of the personal and the professional could cause a few awkward moments, according to Xeni Jardin, a tech journalist for Wired and co-founder of the popular blog BoingBoing (http://www.boingboing.net).”The key limitation in many of these services is they mush together information you would never mush together in real life – you’d never walk into a boardroom and say you want to be spanked.But on Orkut it’s all slapped on one page,” she said.”(For) so many people in the tech community, I know more about their romantic lives and interesting sexual practices then I ever wanted to know.”Orkut is still in its “beta” trial phase, like other social networking sites, many of which can be slow and filled with glitches.WHAT’S NEXT? Even as sites like Orkut are finding their footing, new services are on the horizon that apply social networking technology in novel and unexpected ways.Flickr (http://www.flickr.com) is a hybrid program that allows photograph swapping online.Users still fill out a personal profile, but Flickr is a multimedia instant messaging program, with social networking working quietly in the background.For example, you can decide what photos can be seen by all users and which ones only by close friends.Another recently launched service called Mediachest (http://www.mediachest.com) catalogues users’ music and book collections, then encourages them to lend favourite albums or books to each other.If the borrowers are strangers, you can check out their reliability rating on the site.With new social networking sites launching every week, some users have fallen prey to “social networking fatigue,” as their inboxes are flooded with dozens of invitations.But despite the onslaught, social networking will soon become indispensable for people who turn to the Internet as a means of social interaction.After all, that’s what friends – and friends of friends of friends – are for.- Nampa-ReutersFriendster (http://www.friendster.com), known for its lively online pick-up scene despite its platonic name, was the first service to bring online social networking to the masses.But an emerging group of services go beyond trying to kindle the romantic flames.They include:– LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com), a business networking site that invites users to post resume information and other professional details.– Tribe.net (http://www.tribe.net), designed for “affinity groups” from fans of the rock band Mars Volta to alumni of San Jose State University in California.– MeetUp (http://www.meetup.com), created to help organise events among people with similar interests, played a major role in the now-defunct campaign of US Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean.ARE YOU COOL? The social network currently garnering the most hype among the Internet cognoscenti is Orkut, a multipurpose site owned by the powerhouse search engine Google that encompasses business and hobbies as well as romance.Aside from the cachet of Google, Orkut (http://orkut.com) also has a secret weapon in the battle for supremacy among social networking sites, familiar to anyone who has queued outside a hot disco or tried to join a private club: Exclusivity.Unlike most sites, Orkut isn’t open to just anyone.You must be asked to join by an existing member.Once – or if – an invitation arrives in your inbox, Orkut asks for a wide range of information (all optional) from how much you smoke and what can be found in your bedroom, to where you work and what university degrees you hold.That confluence of the personal and the professional could cause a few awkward moments, according to Xeni Jardin, a tech journalist for Wired and co-founder of the popular blog BoingBoing (http://www.boingboing.net).”The key limitation in many of these services is they mush together information you would never mush together in real life – you’d never walk into a boardroom and say you want to be spanked.But on Orkut it’s all slapped on one page,” she said.”(For) so many people in the tech community, I know more about their romantic lives and interesting sexual practices then I ever wanted to know.”Orkut is still in its “beta” trial phase, like other social networking sites, many of which can be slow and filled with glitches.WHAT’S NEXT? Even as sites like Orkut are finding their footing, new services are on the horizon that apply social networking technology in novel and unexpected ways.Flickr (http://www.flickr.com) is a hybrid program that allows photograph swapping online.Users still fill out a personal profile, but Flickr is a multimedia instant messaging program, with social networking working quietly in the background.For example, you can decide what photos can be seen by all users and which ones only by close friends.Another recently launched service called Mediachest (http://www.mediachest.com) catalogues users’ music and book collections, then encourages them to lend favourite albums or books to each other.If the borrowers are strangers, you can check out their reliability rating on the site.With new social networking sites launching every week, some users have fallen prey to “social networking fatigue,” as their inboxes are flooded with dozens of invitations.But despite the onslaught, social networking will soon become indispensable for people who turn to the Internet as a means of social interaction.After all, that’s what friends – and friends of friends of friends – are for.- Nampa-Reuters