SNS

In our class few weeks ago, Bill asked us that how many facebook friends we have and I was kind a surprise to hear everyones' answer. Most of people had at least hundreds of friends; and my answer was under 10. Also remember how embarrassed I was to hear everyones laughing. When I first opened my SNS was about 10years ago. I opened Cyworld in 2003 which was leading SNS site in Korea. Cyworld was a huge phenomenon. I was in high school at the time and all the people that I know was actually in my friends- Cyworld called it as il-chon, which indicates family members- and contact each other with it. Most of the people used it as self-express tool I guess. Uploading their everyday photos and share it with friends and comments on them. You can find people if you know the name and the year when they were born. Thinking that Korean people are very aware of the age; people in Korean actually use the term friend mostly when they are in same age and someone is even a year older, there is other term according to it to call them. So it was very simple to search people and make il-chon with them. After you find a person you want to make il-chon with you request it and when that someone accepts it you both share the mini-hompie(I think it came from miniature homepage). On the top of your mini-hompie you can see how many people today and up-to today visited so once it was a way of judging whether you are popular or not. Though it is story while ago and the case here that I mentioned is Cyworld but I don't think it is too different in Facebook; which is obviously the leading SNS website in the world. It already too famous that several crime had involved Facebook. This naturally relates the topic the essay said about the privacy problem. This is also the problem that I faced when I ran a mini-homepie. At first the reason I created it was to share photos and many other thing among friends. However, after a while this became too popular that everyone started to make accounts and add me as a friend even we barely know each other. To deny the friend request was too awkward I began to accept those meaningless il-chon. And I began to uncomfortable in posting and using it less often then it just stopped. Yesterday I went on both of my facebook and Cyworld to see when I actually open an account and that was first time I logged in since last year. Not only this little privacy but there are more serious privacy problem occurred from these SNS services. Still, many people using it and will continuously using this services. And with the development in digital devices such as smart phones and tablet it will be in the market pretty popular. However, I feel like it needs many improvement not only on the privacy but also in a variety of format to attract people like me and people in all interest levels.