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Writing letters has now become passé with the recent trend of e-mailing and chatting on popular chat sites making its invasion into our lives. Exploring this phenomenon, ZEENIA BARIA, takes you through the cyber world to help you get connected
We’ve all had pen pals, well, at least most of us have. The thrill of  exchanging notes and cards with complete strangers who gradually become friends is something, which has become quite a rare phenomenon today. Although e-mails and chatting have made the world a much closer place, the art of writing a letter is slowly becoming a penchant for a selected few. If your grandpa wrote your granny long, romantic letters; chances are your kids will probably do the same over the internet, if they aren’t already!
Gone are the days when you had to depend on the good ‘ol postman to deliver your letters. Today’s youngsters are fast getting addicted to friendship and dating sites that seem to have sprung up all over the place especially in the last few years. Orkut, Google’s popular friendship site has recently brought into focus the dangers of putting your pictures and personal information online not that it’s any sort of a deterrent to its users anyway. Members continue to use it as a medium to increase their friend circle and new users are signing up everyday.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re in Durban, Paris, New York or Mumbai, making friends has never been easier! We decided to surf the net for some of the most popular ‘networking’ sites, to see whether we, too, could make some new buddies and ended up meeting a lot of old and new friends; and a couple of freaks as well!
Hi5
This is probably the next most popular site after Orkut. Although it started earlier, its popularity has gone slightly down after Orkut came on the scene a couple of years ago. Hi5 gives you the option of uploading 20 pictures in your account, where you can describe each photograph and where people can post a ‘comment’ on any picture. It is up to you, obviously, to accept or reject the comment. Similarly, when someone adds you to their list, you get a ‘friend request’ and again it is up to whether you want to add that person as your friend. Hi5 also has the option where you can decide how your page will look to others. You can select the background colour, the font and text size and even upload songs and videos so that when others see your profile, they can hum along to the song you’ve picked. Another good option on the site is creating a ‘friend circle’ where you can divide your friends in different groups as well as grade your friends. There is a strict ban against using any obscene pictures and if you happen to come across a profile, which has pornography or offensive content, you can report it to the Hi5 people, action is taken very quick. There is also an option where you can view each person who has viewed your profile. The advantage about this is that there is an option, which you can select so that even if you have viewed someone’s profile, your name will not appear on his or her list. This works great if you want to protect your privacy. There is also an option, which will enable you to find your old classmates and friends from any corner of the globe.
Bingbox
Another networking site, Bingbox is not that popular, maybe because of its slightly confusing options. They have quite an exhaustive questionnaire that you have to fill when you sign up, of course the choice of revealing anything about yourself is on you. The site is also promising a chatting facility in the near future; hopefully the site will be more user friendly by then as well. You can install the Bingbox Music Tool on your PC and your play list will be published in the ‘Music’ section of your profile automatically as soon as you play your favourite songs. This way you can look for people with similar musical preferences to chat and make more friends. Here, too, you can have your own blog page where you can post entries and have conversations. Again, the choice of putting up your pictures is up to you, although it’s quite rare that you’ll see a profile without a picture. The site has made it pretty clear that it will not tolerate any kind of racism, xenophobia or discrimination or for that matter publishing pornographic pictures, paedophilia, offering prostitution or escort services and implicitly or explicitly invite for sexual activities. Another popular preference is the rating of pictures. Anyone who views your profile can rate your photographs on a scale of 1-10. There is also a ‘guest book’ where visitors can write a comment about you. Here too, you can categorise your friends.
 Tagged
This site has chat rooms in different categories. It also has a new ‘topic’ every week, which you can discuss with other tagged members. Mostly used by teenagers, this networking site still has to pick up in India. When you log in to your account, the friends on your list automatically come to know you’re online and this helps you chat instantly. Tagged also clearly mentions not to give out personal information about yourself, your family situation, your telephone number or your address or do so at your own risk. You can also do fun stuff like take part in quizzes or make a quiz yourself and send it to others. That is the most unique feature of the site. You can also change the layout of your page, create your own background in different colours and upload pictures. This site also has a community option i.e. you can join any group, which you’re interested in.
 Gazzag
Another popular site is Gazzag, which is slowly climbing the popularity charts. The great thing about the site is that you can upload as many pictures of yourself as you want. They also have a separate section dedicated to dating, so if that’s the only thing you want to do, you can simply stick there. Again, here, you have the option of joining communities, there’re over 40 communities on various subjects like music, nightlife and clubs, pets and animals, workers and former workers and romance and so on. It is available in different languages, which is makes it convenient and very popular. If the friends are online at the same time that you’re online, you will get an indictor and can chat with them and record the conversation if you want. You can also create your own blog, where you can post whatever you fancy or even start a topic you want to discuss. You can segregate your friends through ‘friend’s lists’, which seems to be a common feature in all similar networking sites. The site is quite user friendly and already has thousands of registered members.
Facebook
Facebook was deliberately designed to limit the accessibility of your profile to only your friends and other people on your networks. This works as a great security measure and ensures that the information you put up about yourself is seen by people you want to share it with and not by people you don’t. Almost all schools, colleges and universities are registered on this site, so you will find it very easy to find old friends and join their networks. Facebook allows you to be a member of as up to five different networks. For example, transfers and grad students can be part of networks at two different schools. Recent college grads can be affiliated with their school and their place of work. But you don’t necessarily have to be studying in any university currently to be a member on this site. The site has loads of features, which will take you quite some time to get used to. But once you’re familiar with all of them, the site becomes quite engaging and entertaining.
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