Continue reading… »

Viewing online and offline friends as being equal can be different than treating online and offline people equally. I know some people who prefer online friends to offline friends. I know some people who prefer offline friends to online friends. For me, online and offline friends can be equal.

I have a personal preference of wanting to move online friends a little bit into the offline realm, whether it be through face to face interaction, phone calls, text messaging via cell phones or even postal mail. That way, I have both online and offline friends and I can treat them equally and consider both to be important, while preferring the offline world a bit more than the online world, regardless of whether the friend was originally an online or an offline friend.

3 random things online and offline friends can offer

To help you figure out the answer to this question more, I am listing below 3 random things that online and offline friends can offer to you in their respective worlds.

3 random things online friends can offer

1. More privacy
2. More space
3. More ways to listen to you - you can send an e-mail or an online message to a friend anytime, even if they are not online

3 random things offline friends can offer

1. More powerful interaction
2. More physical privacy
3. More powerful ways to listen to you

So, do you consider your online and offline friends to be equally important? If you do not have online or offline friends, would you consider them to be equally important if you ever did have both online and offline friends, or would you prefer one over the other?

Please let me know. Also, if you have more things in mind that I can add to the above “3 random things” lists, please let me know and I will add them to this list and give you credit. Thank you.

---

[update September 2nd, 11:35 am PST]
Simonne, in the first comment and answer to this question, said that “The online-offline split is not very clear.” I have added 2 sentences to the end of the 2nd paragraph in this article to briefly explain the difference between the online and offline friends I am referring to. The 2 sentences added are “Also, by an online friend, I am referring to friends we make solely in the online world. By an offline friend, I am referring to friends we make solely in the offline world.” Thank you Simonne.
[end of September 2nd, 11:35 am PST update]

---

« Show less..

Continue reading… »

Good things:

Yesterday, I added an old friend of mine on MySpace to my MySpace account. We have not talked for almost 7 years for reasons I cannot remember, so I am not sure if she will add me as her friend, or if she will freak out and say “Who the heck is Bes? Gonna block this psycho!@!@!@!@!” That is a benefit of using MySpace. Not the blocking part, but the finding old friends part.

Also, you can keep in touch with friends through different things including MySpace Instant Messaging. You can also become part of the school and university groups, rate your professors too.

Bad things:

One of the flaws of using MySpace is relying on a service that is not reliable and something which does not have that many features. Spam and scamming MySpace messages haunt MySpace users. Many porn and dating services are creating fake profiles to lure unsuspecting and maybe desperate people in. Also, many psychos and stalkers are on MySpace, probably tracking different users for whatever reasons.

On top of that, MySpace is becoming more and more of an advertising network where more focus is being put on bringing ads to the users instead of adding features or building MySpace from scratch on many levels to make it more user friendly. I think Facebook learned a lot from MySpace, which is good for Facebook, and uncertain for MySpace.

What do you think of MySpace? Do you like, or would you like to use MySpace?

Some people do not use MySpace to find new people, but to simply keep in touch with people who already have MySpace, and to keep in touch with people who only want to keep in touch through MySpace. So, do you like using MySpace? Do you have, or plan to use MySpace?

Thank you for reading.

« Show less..