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Monday, March 03, 2008

Blogging and Social Networking Boosts Your Social Life

Just saw this report - Blogging Boosts Your Social Life - a rather limited study, but interesting reporting:

Bloggers reported a greater sense of belonging to a group of like-minded people and feeling more confident they could rely on others for help.

All respondents, whether or not they blogged, reported feeling less anxious, depressed and stressed after two months of online social networking.

I can honestly say that the bloggers and social networkers I know who make a real effort with identify with these statements.

Time to go back and update - Top Ten Reasons To Blog and Top Ten Not to Blog

3 comments:

bornindifferent said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
bornindifferent said...

It makes perfect sense. In real life your acquaintances are often made through circumstance rather than design and are often limited geographically. Thw web (and social networking more specifically) allow people to form friendships based on common interests and beliefs and allow regular communication irrespective of location. Doesn't everyone feel better after having a conversation with that one friend who 'really gets you', so what if that friend is on the other side of the country (or even the world) and the means of communication is electronic. I wonder whether there is a significant difference between those who use social networking to look up old friends (and communicate with people that they know) and those who use the tools to actively seek new friends.

What a fantastic educational tool this could be if embraced to its fullest. An environment where students can link up with other students all over the world to understand different cultural perspectives on the concepts that they are studying and also form friendships that may extend beyond the classroom.

Tony Karrer said...

Interesting thought around learning cultural perspectives through these kinds of tools.

I agree that you find a different kind of match electronically. Of course, being the initial CTO for eHarmony makes me a bit biased about matching. :)