NM3225 anti-social networking phenomenon

Let the beautiful people have each other.

What we need are antisocial networking sites! Sites where instead of a Friends list, you can have an Ignore list.

A well-executed Facebook parody site called Hatebook has stepped in to provide (temporary) misanthropes with a place to air grievances about everything they hate. Hatebook looks and functions much like Facebook, except with an evil twist for everything. The color scheme is hellish red, profiles include a section called “Why I’m Better Than You!”, and members can create “Hate Albums” that consist of photos and descriptions of things they hate.

BecauseImHot.com has launched as the world's first social networking site that excludes members after they have signed up for not being hot enough. Members are voted on a scale to determine if they have met the required criteria for keeping their membership active.

The founder of a new anti-social networking site, however, is finding that shared hates can be an equally effective bonding tool. Software engineer Bryant Choung intended to satirize social discovery services when he launched his beta site, Snubster, last month. The site lets members create public lists of people and things that rankle them. "The whole concept of online social networking was really starting to irk me," said Choung, who initially envisioned Snubster as a way to stem the often irritating flow of invitations to join networking sites like Friendster and LinkedIn. While such sites seemed like a good idea at first, their usage too often devolves into "an attempt to get as many fake friends as possible."

Snubster is among the latest in a series of sites created to poke fun at social networking. Others include Isolatr, a spoof site that claims to be "helping you find where other people are not," and Introverster, which bills itself as "an online community that prevents stupid people and friends from harassing you online."

Now that Internet users have forged online relationships with the people they like, they can turn their attention to shaming the folks they hate.With Enemybook, a new program that runs on the social networking site Facebook, you can connect to people you loathe, display their photos and evil deeds, and give them the virtual finger.Enemybook is one of several new online applications developed by computer-savvy twentysomethings who say they are tired of bogus online friendships. In a dig at the notion of virtual networking, they hope to encourage people to undermine, or at least mock, the online social communities sites such as Facebook were designed to create.

"People are yearning to express the ridiculousness of some of the features of Facebook -- having all these friends that aren't genuine," Matulef said. "For some people, Enemybook is about expressing their distaste for political figures or celebrities. And for other people, it actually is about spreading hatred for their despised co-workers and exes."

Bryant Choung, 26, a software engineer in Washington, D.C., who created the program, said he was bothered that Facebook had become little more than an online popularity contest and designed Snubster to provide "a backlash against the ridiculous phenomenon that was social networking.""It's nice because Snubster was supposed to be a parody of Facebook, and by being able to work directly in and around Facebook makes it work so much better," Choung said.

Many blogshops sell fashion apparel such as dresses, blouses, skirts, jeans and accessories such as handbags, belts, necklaces, earrings and handmade jewellery. You will find many of the merchandise are competitively priced. You can buy a cute little dress for less than $10(SGD). The low cost appeals to many teenagers. Beside cute clothing for teenagers, you will also find toys and electronics, cosmetic, skincare product and even health supplements.

ShareYourLook is a new niche community for “fashion addicts, trendsetters, shoppers and designers” that’s currently in beta. The site was co-founded by fashion journalist Melissa Ceria, whose articles have appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. The idea is simple and appealing: upload photos of yourself in your latest outfit, and allow others to rate your look and leave comments, including compliments and quick style tips. There’s tagging, too, plus the ability to send photos to others, add them to your favorites and post them to your “styleblog”. They also make it super-easy to grab an embeddable photo for your blog or profiles on FriendsterFriendster reviews, MySpaceMySpace reviews, hi5Hi5 reviews et al (I assume MySpace is popular with the it-crowd, too).

Fashionistas is a fashion-centric online social networking web 2.0 website dedicated to providing passionate fashionistas a free, one-stop communications platform that gives the ability to network with fashion enthusiasts globally while keeping up to date on the events in the fashion world. Fashionistas mission is to reinvent the way that we connect with fashion. Its purpose is to keep the fashion community connected, stay relevant, and more importantly, allow you to do what you want through the various tools offered by the website. The overall goal for the site is to foster a sense of community.

Fashionistas profiles for members include the ability to: - Write blogs - Member profile photos in their most fashionable attire - Send private messages to other members - Manage various events - fashion related discussions through the development of groups and discussion boards

Calling BeautifulPeople elitist but fair, the site's operators say they're "separating the hippos from the cheetahs" in the social networking jungle."It's not shallow to actively seek to be with someone you're attracted to. That's human nature," says Greg Hodge, managing director of BeautifulPeople. "It might not be politically correct to say so, but it certainly is honest."

Hodge says a woman from Denmark submitted her photo dozens of times over the course of two years, and was only accepted after having dieted, hired a stylist and undergone breast augmentation surgery.

All photos are policed for authenticity. Suspect members are required to e-mail an administrator a picture of themselves holding that day's newspaper. In addition, should a member not uphold the site's standard of beauty -- unless they are the victim of something unpreventible, such as a disease or car accident -- they will be shown the electronic door."We make sure the (attractiveness) level is maintained," says Hodge.

As your business grows so will your need for new employees. Without a doubt you will search for the most extraordinary candidates possible; just like every other company.  If you need to locate and entice quality employees, especially the highly-sought, recent university graduate, you may want to consider a presence on Facebook. To secure the best candidates you must effectively communicate the positive differences your company provides. Do you tell candidates you are focused on their success, fast paced, cutting edge, diverse, open to new ideas, authentic, and collaborative? While you may think you are getting your point across your candidates will hear such claims at nearly every company they speak with. If you would like to make a lasting impression you need to demonstrate these values in action. Ernst Young began a coordinated effort to recruit using Facebook over a year ago. Their Australian Facebook site boasts a wealth of recruiting features including upcoming events, videos from current employees, and discussion boards. The site even offers photo albums where current employees can showcase daily life inside the company.These features paint an overall picture of the corporate culture in a way that traditional recruiting material cannot equal. Ernst Young is demonstrating they are collaborative and focused on their employee’s success.

The thought of exposing your business to a social networking site may seem intimidating. Who knows what could be said? You can mitigate some of this risk by carefully planning how you will portray your company and designing a well thought out governance plan. Bear in mind that the occasional negative comment is already being posted about your company somewhere on the Internet.

We invite people to take a break from their every day experiences carrying around laptops and cellphones, and give them the chance to just disengage from the noise, the social network, the constant communication that’s going on around us all the time. We let them just experience the absence of that — the feeling of being without all those distractions. And a NoSo could happen in a number of different places. It could happen on a street corner, or in a cafe, or in an installation in a gallery setting.

You can definitely tell there are teenagers on the site,” says Bryant Choung, Snubster’s founder. “They put their teachers on there for too much homework or being too hard on them.”

Now that Internet users have forged online relationships with the people they like, they can turn their attention to shaming the folks they hate.

It currently has 1,200 users, who cumulatively have recorded nearly 2,300 acrimonious relationships

"People have always been mean and petty and now, with the culture of putting everything online and the reality shows that thrive on voting people off the island or telling people you're fired, it's not surprising that people want to blast their enemies to the world," said Patrice Oppliger, assistant professor of mass communications at Boston University.

Online social networks are usually all about bringing together people who like the same things. The founder of a new anti-social networking site, however, is finding that shared hates can be an equally effective bonding tool.

The popularity of social networking sites may also have unexpected consequences for users. A gay student attending a Christian college was expelled after administration officials viewed photos of the student in drag on Facebook. Twenty middle school students in California were suspended after participating in a MySpace group where one student allegedly threatened to kill another and made anti-Semitic remarks. In Kansas, authorities arrested five teenagers after one of the suspects used MySpace to outline plans for a Columbine-like attack on the boys' school.

These things can have exponential growth. Then, if another community shows up that has better functionality in some way, there can be a mass migration."

Virtual communities together form a social network which is superimposed on, and complementary to, the network consisting of face-to-face communities.

The first stage, popular cyberculture, is marked by its journalistic origins and characterized by its descriptive nature, limited dualism, and use of the Internet-as- frontier metaphor. The second stage, cyberculture studies, focuses largely on virtual communities and online identities and benefits from an influx of academic scholars. The third stage, critical cyberculture studies, expands the notion of cyberculture to include four areas of study -- online interactions, digital discourses, access and denial to the Internet, and interface design of cyberspace -- and explores the intersections and interdependencies between any and all four domains