Web friends - up close and too personal?

8:50am Friday 28th September 2007

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When it comes to friends the Internet has created a host of ways to keep in touch with old friends and make new ones.

Friends Reunited started it, but sites like Facebook and MySpace where you can set up a personal profile site and let friends' - real and virtual - log on to your site, are surging in popularity.

But the face of personal online sites is changing and going public in a big way. Are we ready to face a global public?

Many people have created personal sites on www.facebook.com, www.myspace.com and www.bebo.com. Facebook is about to become an open book, as it is opening up the search function to the world - without requiring registration first. Anyone with a facebook site who doesn't want the whole world knowing about their site needs to check that box by the end of September. The security of having a private online living room you could invite' friends in to is about to become an open house'. Users will be able to search for people online using Google. Details like date of birth, home address, and phone numbers will be exposed to potential abuse by others. How open do we want to be?

But, according to a www.Reuters.com report, research carried out at Sheffield Hallam University, http://www.shu.ac.uk/research/, says that however many virtual' friends one may have collected from Internet activity, there is no difference in the number of close, personal - face-to-face - friends people have. According to reports about the research, 90 per cent of people say knowing someone in the flesh is important in a close friendship. So is less more?

Sometimes using technology to search for others is a good thing. For example, Google Earth - the satellite-based map of the world live - is being used in the search for missing adventurist Steve Fossett, http://www.stevefossett.com/. This is good. And he isn't the only lost person the Internet is trying to help find. Why not use this wonderful technology in this way?

Keeping the faith in people power is Jimmy Wales, the founder of the online people-driven WIKIPEDIA, www.wikipedia.org . He wants to compete with the big mechanical' search engines with a human-powered search version of Wikipedia. This means you can search for things that people have placed on the website to be found - for a fee. What will this 360 degree change of view on search engines reflect?

Recent reports are hightlighting concerns that British parents are keeping too tight a rein on their children and not letting them play out enough. With the miserable weather we had this summer, it's no surprise children spent more time indoors. In China, according to a story on Cnet's www.news.com, in a survey of 100 Chinese children between four and 14 years of age, only four per cent chose to play outside this summer. About 13 per cent of China's youth Internet users are considered online addicts. Do you know what your children are doing online?

Online communities are being built at public demand. And people are very positive about their Web options. The most important thing is for the Web to be true to its audience and do what the users want. It was intended to connect people and open communications - so in the interest of freedom of expression and access to information we must protect this core function. However, as with driving a car, using an appliance, participating in an extreme sport, skills, knowledge and a cautious attitude are recommended.