The Effect of Online Societies IRL, Part Two

I believe that the creation and population of online societies was an inevitable consequence of the modern era.  David Bell argues that three processes greatly helped to pave the way for this phenomenon (Bell 95).  These processes are detraditionalization, disembedding, and globalization.  Essentially, because of our push for a “post-traditionalist” society in which we have very few ties to the past, we disembed ourselves from our parents and relatives on an intellectual basis in favor of the pursuit of our own brand of truth and personality.  When this is paired with globalization that has “made the world smaller”, the result is that there is a huge population of people looking for something.  The Internet gave them a place to do that, and online societies were born.

Social Networks

            Now that we’ve taken a brief look at how online societies got their start, it’s time to examine the various forms of online societies and then try to understand how they are affecting us even when we aren’t logged on.      I will be taking a close look at four different categories of online societies.  These are social networks, e-commerce sites, and entertainment.  Every category has a number of popular sites within it that I will briefly cover examine how they have contributed to offline change in major ways.

            The first social network that we are going to take a look at is arguably the most prevalent and certainly the most popular site, Facebook.  In 2004, 19-year old Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook, a virtual network intended to help students at Harvard get to know each other.  By late 2005, all US universities and high schools were able to register their students for the site.  A year later, the site opened its virtual doors to anyone with an email address, turning Facebook into a completely open network of individuals (guardian.co.uk).  Today, Facebook has well over 500 million daily users and is a billion-dollar company (mashable.com).  It isn’t just for individuals anymore, either.  Pages have been created for businesses and charities, and new companies have been formed that market almost exclusively to Facebook users through content like games and applications of all sorts.

            Facebook is a shining example of how a virtual society can heavily impact life offline.  Mark Zuckerberg is the ultimate example of this.  He took a simple idea and made it into a billion-dollar company in less than a decade.  Economist.com reports that the site has nearly 3,000 employees, each with an average income of 1.2 million dollars annually (economist.com).  Facebook.com is churning out millionaires through purely virtual networking.  For those of us who aren’t employees, however, the impact on our real lives is still extremely deep.  Millions of users log on to the site daily, and when they’re logged on, they regularly post content that describes their feelings about goings-on in their lives and about new relationships and so on.  For a nosy person, Facebook is like paradise.  If I am having a bad day, there is a good chance that I will post a status update about it on the site, allowing my entire list of friends to weigh in on my feelings.  I like to say that Facebook is often used as a sort of crowd sourced therapy session.  Journaling is a tool used by people all over the world as a way to relieve stress and help them work through problems.