The Tipping Point

Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Whatsapp, Viber, LinkedIn, MySpace, FourSquare, Blackberry Messenger, Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live.


The above is a non-exhaustive list of social networks or applications that serve the same purpose (more or less): communication and sharing with friends, family, co-workers, etc... But why so many? If Orkut was not enough, we have Facebook, if WhatsApp was not enough, we have Viber. The growth of social media has been very fast-paced. So much that one can consider the current times to be the "tipping point" where individuals are likely to saturate into the existing networks and will tend to ignore upcoming ones. After all, how many times would one enter their personal data and why take the pains to keep them updated.


To summarize: How many social networks should a person join to be considered enough?

the new stalker - Facebook!

Yup, your biggest stalker is not on Facebook, but its Facebook itself! And that's not according to a new research but an observation screenshotted above. Status updates, photos, videos have always been the crux of Facebookers. The introduction of the "Place" subsequently replaced by location tracking added the geographical aspect to social updates on FB. The introduction of the "Timeline" feature signaled that FB was using a detail-oriented approach with respect to the lives of its consumers. The latest straw in the hat is now the "life event" option that appears in the status update tab list. It seems that the existing updates and data uploaded by FB users needs categorization so that some sense can be extracted from it.

As is visible in the above screenshot, a number of life events can be entered in. Even existing posts/data can be linked to an "event". The purpose is to arrange everything in a linear time axis (because that's the best way to learn about someone). Sounds like there's a new stalker in town and he's going to make you arrange all your information neatly!