This recipe calls for one part Google search, two portions JPEG
file, a dollop of blog and a dash of ego. Mix and serve on fresh
yearbook pages. It’s called networking in the new millennium.
This recipe calls for one part Google search, two portions JPEG file, a dollop of blog and a dash of ego. Mix and serve on fresh yearbook pages. It’s called networking in the new millennium.
At colleges across the country, students are logging on to connect with friends, friends of friends, strangers and romantic partners through Web search services that work on the same principle as “six degrees of separation,” whereby someone can know a complete stranger through a friend of a friend of a friend and so on.
The sites link people through common friends in an online maze.
At sites like MySpace.com and Friendster.com, users can post their profiles, gather friends and mine their contacts for more or search for specific names in hopes of landing the contact information for a long-lost pal, a recent hook-up or someone they hope to go out with.
Janall Arthur, a Gavilan sophomore from Milpitas who is majoring in communications, joined MySpace.com because a friend recommended the service for its options. His home page, supplied for free by MySpace.com and personalized by Arthur himself, is now up and running, with a blog listing the major events of his week and the music video “Oh” by Ciara and Ludacris playing off to one side.
Over the past eight months, he’s reconnected with old friends, including a girl who moved away from his hometown in the fifth grade and eventually settled in Sacramento.
“You just type in a name, and since pretty much everyone is on there already anyway, most of the time they pop up,” said Arthur.
So far, the 19-year-old has mostly used the service to look up friends from elementary school he’d lost touch with, but plenty of other opportunities have come his way.
“I’ve met a lot of girls,” said Arthur, smiling sheepishly. “If they see your picture, and they think you’re cute, they wanna conversate.”
The site, which many college students use to meet new friends or talk to old buddies can also be used to kindle romance. Students tell stories of boyfriends and girlfriends meeting on the site.
One girl, 19-year-old San Martin resident Lindsay Silva, even claims she knows a girl who met and married a man from the site.
For Melissa Ballard, a 19-year-old Gilroy resident in her second year at Gavilan, the college’s group page on MySpace.com was the perfect place to meet a man.
It’s where she found her boyfriend of the last six weeks, and she has met other friends through the site, too.
“This random girl messaged me, like six months ago, when I first signed on,” said Ballard. “She lives in Oregon, but she’s moving to Gilroy, and she was trying to connect with people before she got down here. I thought it was really cool because when she gets here she’ll already know people.”
Students like those at Gavilan say the sites are addictive. Silva spends as much as three hours a night online chatting, posting and connecting with friends.
Sometimes it’s easier than picking up the phone. Other times it’s just a different way to keep in touch.
But the ways of youth are fickle. As one site becomes too popular or another offers additional services, online friends stop checking mail and logging on.
Friendster, though still a great place to meet people, is now considered passé, according to students.
“People will be on one site, and they change,” said Silva. “Then you have to change because they don’t do Friendster anymore. Now it’s just MySpace or LiveJournal.”
