socialgeek-be

© dullhunk

An Egyptian man named his recently born baby girl "Facebook" after the crucial role the website played in the protests that swept the Arab world. Millions of Egyptians and Arabs seemed very appreciative of the role of Facebook in making grassroots demonstrations successful.

Since then, Arab confidence in Facebook has suffered a significant setback after the site shut down "The Third Palestinian Intifada" page which had amassed 350,000 supporters. After first rejecting requests to remove the page, Facebook did an about-face and deleted it. Although Facebook's reversal pleased the Israeli government, it outraged Arab web activists.

Closing popular pages is not an easy decision for Facebook from a business perspective. But it has increasingly faced pressure to close down pages that might be viewed as anti-Israel, thus risking the possibility of losing the trust of millions of Arabs and Muslims.

© Spencer E Holtaway

With social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Orkut becoming part and parcel of most computer-users' everyday lives, the need for online etiquette is becoming increasingly important. Although social networking sites limit interaction between users to non-personalized communication, it is still important to maintain etiquette while using these forums.

Tapping in on the need for maintaining online decorum, WSLS.com has come out with a list of tips on staying polite on the internet. The website has listed out tips on communicating through social networking sites without offending other users. For example how it is important to remember that topics that are considered controversial should not find their way onto your Facebook or Twitter profile.

The list of tips also touches upon the best ways to share and tag photographs on social networking sites and why it is important to seek the permission of connections before adding their photographs to public forums like Facebook. These tips go a long way in educating internet users in online etiquette suited to the continuously expanding world of social networking sites.

© GianCayetano

Friendster, a social networking site is set to delete all its user profiles and accounts by the 31st of May this year. It plans to reinvent itself as 'the social gaming destination of choice' instead.

The social networking site did not reach the peaks that Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn did, but this social network site claimed the name of 'social networking website of choice' for many in 2003, although it could not keep users from signing off and signing on to competing social networking sites as time marched on.

Friendster began with the hopes of becoming a place where friends could connect, share photos, and comment on each others profiles but ended up spending most of its life in the shadows of more popular social networking sites.