Why social networking websites are so popular today ?

It is my personal essay about social networking sites.

Social networking websites, over the last years, have rapidly increased in popularity. Let’s see why social networking websites are so popular today.

Nowadays people are always connected to Internet. We are connected at home with our own personal computer, at work and finally anywhere thanks to the latest Smartphone in our pockets. With the huge variety of social networking websites, there is almost every kind of social networks designed for a particular purpose and a particular community.

The first feature in most of the social networking websites like Facebook is their ease of use. Today people don’t need computer’s programming skills to be present on the web. These social networking websites are made so simple, the only thing that we need is an internet connection.

The second aspect is the ease in making friends. For instance with Facebook, by clicking on a button, you are able to ask people to being a friend. It’s a way to grow up your “friends” list. The web is a second place for being popular; it becomes a competition to get the largest friend list. Lily Allen & the Arctic Monkey became famous thanks to MySpace, the website Band’s social network. Therefore social network is an easy tool to be popular in a very short time.

Another noticeable feature of social networking websites is that most of them are free, like P2P (free downloading). As Mark Zuckerberg Facebook’s COE said “It’s cool cause it’s free”, social networking’s sites get money from advertisements except LinkedIn and Twitter. LinkedIn and Twitter are for professionals and differ from social website so if you want additional features, you need to pay for them.

There are social networks for the fun like Facebook where we can share pictures from party with friends from our real life. Besides, there are professional networks like LinkedIn where we can make virtual connections. These people without knowing us may help us to solve professional issue.

Social networks become a weapon against censorship. People can exchange their own opinion and share the truth to the rest of the world. It helps people to express their freedom of speech. What is not written in newspaper can be spread for instance in Twitter. These social networks become a political tool.

Not only computers but mobile phones allow us to share instant messaging. We live the event right away we spread it in real time to the rest of the world. Everyone can report news to us.

Whoever you are, whatever are your ideas, whatever your job is, you can find a social network fitting your needs. It becomes so important in daily life but we should not forget that the real life is not behind a screen.