by Jason Marquand – Team Bayshore

A few years ago if someone had asked you about social networking, the mental image of conventions and interest-oriented groups would spring to mind.  It was much more of a physical, face to face type of encounter.  Step into this current phase of technology and it is a much different animal.  Social networking has become so ingrained into almost everything that we do nowadays, it’s almost impossible to escape it.

Here’s a for instance: if you wanted to socialize and generate buzz for your company, you would attend industry mixers and conventions.  With services like LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com), it makes even easier to socialize and network, and all from your desk.  Let’s say you are new in town and want to find commonly interested new friends, well MySpace (www.myspace.com) and Facebook (www.facebook.com) provide that in a big way.

Social networking has also done more than just facilitate new ways to network with technology or meet new people.  Newer services like Twitter (www.twitter.com) allow people to stay in touch with new and old friends alike, in a more status based way.  You don’t even need to be at your desk anymore, as these apps all have a presence on our mobile devices.

Big companies have not missed the bus on this.  I get repeated updates from Dell, on a daily basis, trying to sell me equipment at bargain basement pricing.  Browser plugins like StumbleUpon (www.stumbleupon.com) allow us to see sites and products we would have never known existed, unless we stayed plugged into the internet Matrix style with a wall of monitors randomly showing websites.

Where is it going now?  I partake in a beta program for a media platform called Boxee (www.boxee.tv).  This package even integrates into Twitter and posts updates to my account, listing what I am watching at any given time or if I recommend whatever I am watching to my friends. On top of that it has its own social network where I can see what my friends are watching or recommend and allows us to all stay up on what we all find entertaining.  This is a lot easier than describing something to a friend and giving away too much, or too little in the process of conveying the salient points.  The kicker is that there is absolutely nothing I need to do to make this happen.  I just watch what I watch.

Where is this all going to lead?  Who knows?  But it will be entertaining to see which fledgling technologies will make it or break it, for this ongoing trend.  I would like to see everything fall down to one consolidated system that I can carry with me everywhere and is a seamless part of my lifestyle.  Maybe the switch to digital in the upcoming month will play a big part in getting these outlets plugged in to the end user, on a service provider level.  Imagine watching your favorite show on Fox on a Monday and having comments from your friends about the show somewhere on screen.    It’s limitless in its possible application.

As a species we are social creatures, and these technologies have allowed us to extend that trait exponentially.  As the technology grows, so will our level of communication.  Is it a good thing?  Well that’s for the individual.  I doubt the Unibomber would have rushed to get his favorite chat client installed on his new iPhone.  There will always be people who just cannot fathom being social.�