The Social Intro
The earliest memories go back to early 2004. I was still in college, and everyone was talking about Orkut, a social networking site popular in India. Technology geek and internet junkie I was, I signed up soon after. I spent the first few months just trying to get my hands around the idea of online networking, adding all the friends or real contacts in the virtual world and using the wall as a delayed chatting tool. This was before SMS and mobile phone fever had caught up and scraps, or wall posts, were the closest thing. It was August 2004 and I discovered the communities. There was one for everyone: for your sun sign, educational institution, city, political party, even the food, restaurant or place you liked. I soon found myself a member of over 20 communities that described my interests, location and educational background, etc.
Introduced to the World, squeezed into a website
"Scorpio" was one of the communities I joined. With stringent rules and actual government, "Scorpio" was different than the other communities I had joined. As I started reading through the threads and topics on the community, I realized they had very little to do with the sun sign. This was a brewing pot for the creative mind--a poet, a writer, an astrologer, a software engineer, a doctor and a teacher sharing their creative prowess. I was sucked into this virtual world, and these people from across the globe became my first virtual contacts. All of us were unsure of what we could do with the immense capability this new tool provided us. Among many other threads, we started a soap opera with all the members as characters. Everyone pitched in with their creative thoughts for the most amazing twist and turns.
The Peril
By mid-2005, "Scorpio" had over 10,000 members, and spam attacks were common. The community moderators (including me) were always watching to cut short any attempts. The community grew to over 30,000 by 2007, and the number of disgruntled spammers grew. Eventually, one moderator's account was compromised by a spammers who wiped out the community's maze of threads, and all of our creative efforts were gone. It was a perilous phase of my online presence; but by this time, all of the contributors had bonded very well, and we began to rebuild. Although we lost a lot of soul in the attack, we still have close to 35,000 members today.
The PayBack
I joined Business School in Fall 2007, as my virtual friends were all aware. The economy soon showed the signs of a slowdown. 2008 rolled in, and I found myself without an internship. One of my contacts from "Scorpio" lived in New York and helped me to network with many people, one of whom eventually put me in touch with my manager at the company where I interned. And guess what, I was working on developing online communities to help people network internally!
The Evolution
While I was busy in my own world, socializing online and making friends I have never met in person, the social media exploded, and I discovered my 5-year-old cousin had an account on 3 different social media websites! I opened my Facebook account when I joined B-School, and it has now become the primary social media around which my life revolves. But the world has expanded, and it is no longer the small world I once knew. The population explosion is phenomenal, and social media start-ups like Twitter and Flickr have all found their own successful niches. More businesses now have a presence on these websites and, by the day, are spending more marketing dollars to generate viral effects beyond belief.My own online presence has helped me in more ways than I could have imagined. I have no doubt I'll continue to be surprised as I move toward building a career in this ever-changing world.
