Social+Perspectives+(Chelsea)

=Myspace=

=Color= This application is definitely promoting social interaction. It sounds like the main goal of this application was to meet and make friends with new people you have never met who happened to be right around you in proximity. In my opinion, I think that this would actually jump to the opposite extreme from isolation, with around-the-clock total socialization. How much is too much? People who are complete strangers to you can stalk you without you even knowing who they are! This social network can turn any member of it into a victim, and I do not believe this is a very good idea. It sounds dangerous and careless with its design. I mean many people obviously do not care if their privacy is no longer existent, with social networks like twitter, people just write down every detail of what they do during the day. This is all pretty disturbing, that people would not care if any random person knew where they were. What if there was one of your mortal enemies standing around the corner planning to sneak up to you and attack you? I am sure this would not happen everyday or anything like that, but it will happen; I will bet any amount of money that one day a rapist will find a pretty, young girl through Color. Because simply having the chance even there, I believe is a good enough reason for this to not keep existing. With the constant pictures, people can even see what color shirt you are wearing, or what other people with you look like. Personally, I like my privacy and will continue to protect it as best as I can throughout my whole life.

**Internet Dating**

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Looking at the social perspective within internet dating, I would say that it is pretty good for what it was meant to do. Many people turn to internet dating websites to do a wide range of different things from a long term relationship to a meaningless one night stand, and I feel like dating websites probably do a good job connecting people who want the same things out of them. This kind of meeting people could definitely lead to dangerous situations when people do decide to meet up for a date after talking online, but I'm not sure that this is the case a lot of the time. Being through the internet, there is definitely still the isolation component, but I am pretty sure that people intend on meeting up in person with each other most of the time, taking that component away. Also, because it is online, there is never a true way to know what the person you are talking to is like until you meet them; there are many people who have completely different personalities from themselves in person as opposed to online. Similarly, anyone could post a picture of any random person as their own picture; it is extremely easy to go to google images and find any picture, save it as your own, then post it on your profile as yourself. Internet dating allows many people to meet each other that may have never otherwise have met, which is a great thing. Weighing the pros and cons, I would say that the benefits that come from internet dating websites probably outweigh the risks, and I also feel like many of the risks can be avoided to a certain extent by meeting with people from online in some kind of public place, and letting someone know when they are meeting up with them. So, all in all, I would say internet dating is a positive social entity.=====

=Video Based Social Networking= Because of video based social networking, there is a whole new door open to socializing on the internet. Networks like Skype and Oovoo allow users to see and talk to people online, making it appear as if the person is actually right in front of you (even though they are just a picture on the computer screen). This is a really interesting concept, because people can just hang out with each other via their computers, without actually being with them physically in any way. This is definitely a positive for socializing, because it provides a person with the ability to see, hear, and interact with another person the same way as if they were standing next to each other interacting. This is different from other social networks because of that, and is far more social than any of the others, because it is almost the same as being with each other; the only entity that is missing is that you cannot //touch// each other, but honestly, I do not touch most of the people I interact with on a regular basis, so this is really not too far away from regular human interaction. There are people who never really leave their house and spend all day on their computer, so with networks such as these, this provides those individuals with that human interaction that is so necessary in life. Networks like Youtube do not allow for this interaction in the same kind of way, so they would not be promoting socializing much at all, except for the option of commenting on videos, which is obviously not like human interaction in person at all, but is more like Facebook.