The people asked for social networking.And God said, "Let there be networking." And so He created MySpace.
But the people wanted more. And they prayed and thumped their chests and cried out for more.
And so God (and possibly Mark Zuckerberg) created Facebook.
But the people were still not satisfied. Neither the Book of Faces nor the Space of Mine sufficiently appeased their desire to be heard.
And so God created Twitter. And He said, “Go forth and speaketh in 140 characters or less.”
And so, the people tweeted.
But the people still were not satisfied. And so God created…
Couchsurfing?
What is this “couchsurfing” we speak of?
A recent phenomenon (the first couch was surfed, circa 1999), it all began with couchsurfing.org, “a service in which members offer a spare couch – or bed, or floor space – to fellow couchsurfers, at no charge.”
The concept has since grown to include many other sites at which people can rent out apartments and homes all over the world. (AirBnB.com and iStopOver.com are just two popular newcomers to the scene.)
Couchsurfing takes social networking to a whole new level. Though some say that the very nature of social networking ironically makes us anti-social (interactions are far more limited across a computer screen), this concept allows for entirely new friend-making possibilities.
Couchsurfing networks bring together the virtual and the real. It also brings together random strangers. (Unlike traditional social networks which help us more deeply connect with people we already know.)
So where will social networking take us next?
And God said, “Ye faithful social networkers, sit back and think about it.”
-Jamie
