It is curious how the globalisation of people is happening much faster than the globalisation of goods. While trade talks to cut subsidies on products have been immobilised for years, the global expansion of relationships between people is probably the fastest growth area on the planet.
I signed up to social websites such as MySpace, Bebo and Facebook mainly to keep up with what is going on. Not much happened because you have to work hard at entering all your “friends” and personal data to make it worthwhile.
Until last week, that is, when my Facebook account suddenly acquired a life of its own. A couple of people I know here and in the United States offered “friendship” (a word that is having its meaning devalued because of all the people who collect “friends” the way some collect stamps). I accepted, and soon after people I knew who saw my photo on their friend’s list clicked on it offering me friendship — and I added one or two I recognised from their lists. Pretty soon, in a mini version of chain letters, there were more than a dozen, with as many in the wings I had never heard of (to whom I didn’t link).
Soon interactive conversations (using text) were taking place over often quite trivial bits of information or comments on photos or pointing out interesting new websites. You can either correspond with someone privately or reply on your “wall” so everyone can see.
There is a function similar to the newly fashionable Twitter.com where you simply say what you are doing at that moment, which a lot of people find addictive. Small wonder that active Facebookers don’t email any more: all their friends are there to be communicated with instantly, 24/7 — and you can see which of your friends is online at that moment. Groups can be set up to attract kindred spirits. There is even one for people who get steamed up because their names are regularly misspelt by others.
Facebook is one of a number of social sites with different attractions. Bebo is much better for checking out bands and has a whiteboard you can draw on, while Rupert’s Space, sorry, MySpace, by far the biggest, is full of in-your-face intrusive adverts.
People invest large amounts of social capital in these sites — spending hours entering photos, address books, videos and so forth. They can import other sites, such as Flickr.com, so they become in effect a permanent home page from which they don’t move away during the day.
This makes a mockery of statistics based on page views, since users might be hyperactive on the web but seldom move from their home page, thereby embedding their loyalty. No wonder web giants such as Yahoo!, unable (interestingly) to use their own massive leverage to set up big enough social sites of their own, are gobbling up all the successful new-generation start-ups.
These new sites are making personal relationships more intimate (based on communal interests or hobbies as well as flirting) on a global scale. The likes of Facebook have added a fresh layer of communication. Email facilitates links with people with whom you would never otherwise keep up. Text messaging conjures up conversations, 90% of which wouldn’t have happened under previous technologies but only on a one-to-one (national) basis.
The new generation of social sites with libraries of photos of your friends, their friends and their friends’ friends generates a global intimacy that could go on and on. On Facebook I found myself in contact with friends after midnight about mundane things just because they were online. If I had SMSed it would have been seen as intrusive — and a telephone call completely over the top.
On such sites you usually chat to people with whom you have a link. In virtual worlds such as Second Life you, or your avatar, can say hi and talk with strangers. I have met people who, after saying hi to strangers in virtual worlds, claim to do it more often in real life. Goodness knows what will be going on 10 years hence when global relationships come of age.