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Social networking sites have been viewed as the top news to internet users. Whenever there is a physical gathering of friends you are bound to hear them discuss one or another social networking sites, “Are you on Facebook?” or “I added you on Tagged did you notice?”, “You know My Space could do great for your music.”

With all these excitement going on one would wonder why there are so many people interested in social networking. All one has to do is to get into the social networking website and join. The process is as easy as A, B, C. Fill in your pen name, put in your email address and verify with the code to ensure that you really are human! Bravo you are in. The rest can be done at your own time. When that time come for you to update your profile, you indicate your age, marital status, your work place and the list goes on and on. Simply identify yourself. That is all it takes.

Then comes the most important part; inviting friends. Social networking is not complete without the part of linking with friends, which is why it is called social networking anyway. The most famous social networking site of our times is Facebook. Facebook has made it so easy to add friends. The most beautiful part of it is that you can invite a friend to join Facebook as long as you know the friend’s email address. Once the friend receives the email inviting him to join, he can choose to sign in or not. Most of the people sign in as soon as they see the invitation. The bright side of this is that the new Facebook user gets suggestions of friends that he can link up with. Most of these friends are the friends of the one person who invited him to join. How easy can it get?

The joy of social networking is the chance to reunite with long lost friends, old schoolmates of all nature those you liked and those you didn’t. That’s the fun of it all, isn’t it? You also get to meet new people in the process, some whom you could get into business with depending on the nature of your business and your intention of joining the social networking site. Others are there for the sake of keeping up with the chat! I call this group, the Joys of socializing!

Other friends that you meet with on the social networking sites may just lie idle in your friends list after they have requested you to add them up- rather irritating! I call them the Net-Idlers, they are simply not my type and they don’t stay long in my list of friends. I am not an idler.

Have you ever wondered why there are such people in your list of friends who are just dormant? They ask you to add them up, and you faithfully do. They write the first note to introduce themselves forcing you to visit their profiles, you view their photos and all their information and then what? They stop communicating! Why on earth were they wasting your energy for in the first place?

I really hate this, I really do!

Most of the social networking sites allow more than hundreds of friends; it is your wish to control your friendship list. In this world of social networking, the aim of every user is to connect with valuable friends. Those that add flavor into your life. If you are an article writer you will probably set your new articles on your profile for your friends to read. There are those friends who simply don’t read the articles. So you take your time and send a message to each one of them with the link of your latest article just to notice that they never read it in the first place. What do you do? Keep the friend or loose them as fast as an old chewing gum? It’s your choice, but in my opinion, I don’t need such. I delete them as soon as I notify them that I don’t see the need of them enriching my profile with their dormancy. As I said, it’s your choice.

Then there are those that are so active that anytime they see you online they send you a word or two. This has two sides of life; some really mean well, so they say “Hi” and then a few words of intelligence and they are gone. I love that type, although I wouldn’t mind more words. At least they are alive. The worst bit of them are those that get angry because of you have been placing social comments on another friend’s profile and not theirs. The jealous type; those can be very dangerous. Watch out. There is also the kind of friend that only talks about himself or herself. It is always about them. Forgive them all. But there is this group that I cannot tolerate. They Tag you and you go on a very mature and social talk. They take their time to find out who you are and before long you are exchanging addresses. You take it further and it goes either business or simple social. It is social networking after all. Most of this have guts to even want to meet you physically, just to start harassing you. Social networking sites are simply meant to connect you with your friends. It is not the responsibility of the site creators to ensure your physical security once who have leaked your information to your “friends”. Many people have been robbed by their friends whom they have claim to have met on these social networking sites. Others have had their hearts broken; actually this has been the worst of all. The pains that many have encountered can only be a statistic but it’s up to you to keep it safe with the friends you connect with.

A few things you might want to do to keep it safe are;

Do not include your cell phone number or home address on you social networking site.

Do not indicate your health status on your profile. Many people have been sabotaged by perpetrators who knew their health conditions.

Keep it real online. It is just a part of discipline to stay off flirting zones. There are enough sick people in their mind online that you will ever know. If you are not pro-flirting don’t even try it.

Avoid continuous chatting with people who show signs of immaturity online. Some friends that you get paint your profile with a lot of immature talk. Remember that there are social friends who you could be doing business with. Either keep off the immaturity, and do the business or choose to keep up with the immaturity and loose the business, the choice is yours.

Delete any friend whom you suspect is behaving in an immoral way. If your belief system is being violated by your social network friend, get rid of him, you will only be hurting yourself by keeping the friend on.

There many more way of keeping your profile in shape. Social networking is not a contest of how many friends one can get; it is simply a way of connecting with the decent people in this world. They may not be citizens of your country, or people of your race, the most important thing is to see positive results of your social networking.

Are your enjoying networking?