Janetnews.com Blog

42% say they don’t know what Social Networking means…

Across the 17 global markets surveyed, 42% of people know what online social networking is, says Synovate. The Dutch were most likely to know the term with 89% answering ‘yes’, followed by Japan at 71% and Americans with 70% answering in the affirmative. 26% across the markets surveyed are members of social networking sites. This peaked with the Netherlands at 49%, United Arab Emirates (UAE) at 46%, Canada at 44% and the US at 40% (though keep in mind that’s 40% of a huge population).

Here’s a neat site that lets people with different viewpoints debate:

Opposing Viewpoints

Google a controversial topic and you will be swamped with blogs and message boards filled with readers’ thoughts, some insightful, others biased or not factual. Russell Fine hopes to provide an alternative with Opposing Views, a Web site that went live in July. It presents debates between two experts on either side of controversial issues, along with reader responses.

“Our basic mantra is to focus on issues people really care about, the things that keep you up at night, and our goal is to provide you a way to become educated and well-informed,” Mr. Fine said.

Interesting article in the NYTimes that talks about social interaction and how intimate it is becoming.
Brave New World of Digital Intimacy

Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it “ambient awareness.” It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye. Facebook is no longer alone in offering this sort of interaction online. In the last year, there has been a boom in tools for “microblogging”: posting frequent tiny updates on what you’re doing. The phenomenon is quite different from what we normally think of as blogging, because a blog post is usually a written piece, sometimes quite long: a statement of opinion, a story, an analysis. But these new updates are something different. They’re far shorter, far more frequent and less carefully considered.

Grandma and Grandpa have their very own social networking sites! 

New Social Sites Cater to People of a Certain Age  

Older people are sticky. 

That is the latest view from Silicon Valley. Technology investors and entrepreneurs, long obsessed with connecting to teenagers and 20-somethings, are starting a host of new social networking sites aimed at baby boomers and graying computer users.

The sites have names like Eons, Rezoom, Multiply, Maya’s Mom, Boomj, and Boomertown. They look like Facebook — with wrinkles.