Upon starting your first year at Dartmouth, you probably received a copy of the Green Book, which contains a picture of each member of your class paired with some personal information limited to hometown and high school. (Sorry Class of 2013). Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg turned the Harvard version of this low-budget concept into a billion dollar empire with the most infamous social networking site of them all. It is one of a veritable legion of social networking sites each with its own flavor.
Facebook needs no explanation. It's part of our daily lives. We use it to stalk, post pictures of ourselves, leave carefully crafted wall-posts onf friends' walls and let the rest of the world know how clever we are. The best part of Facebook, though, is that nearly everyone is on it. So whether you want to stalk that cute guy across the hall or your friend's hot mom chances are he or she's on Facebook. Perfect if: You are a citizen (natural-born or otherwise) of planet Earth. The site's population is growing steadily to match that of the world.Avoid If: You've spent years perfecting that Salinger-esque recluse reputation and don't want to blow it now; you're my mom. Seriously, Mom, shouldn't you be off doing, um, mom things?
MySpace
MySpace gets a pretty bad rap. Even though I'm willing to bet a fair share of us had a MySpace before getting to college, the 'Space has become synonymous with slutty high schoolers. While all Facebook profiles generally look the same (especially with the regulation of all those horrible applications), MySpace users are free to customize their page. This can include seizure-inducing animated GIFs and techno music blasting right from an integrated music player. Today, the best use of MySpace probably has to be music. Both super-famous bands and, yes, high-schoolers with some instruments and a computer have the capabilities to upload music to MySpace and that's a good thing for the rest of us. Perfect if: The median age of your BFFs is 15; you're in a band/you like music. Avoid If: You have an aversion to bright colors and music randomly starting to play when you access a webpage.
Ever have a random thought or question, but none of your friends are around to hear it? Or you don't have any friends? Twitter answers the age-old question about the tree falling in the forest: If it had Twitter, and could squeeze in the account of its dramatic fall within 140 characters, then yes, the entire world would hear it. These days, the only thing bigger than our budget deficit is our national attention deficit and Twitter caters to our collective ADD by limiting tweets to 140 characters, eliminating our need to write or read for long spans of time.
Twitter also has a special niche cornered in that actual famous people are on it. You, too, can follow the everyday lives of Miley Cyrus, Bobby Flay and Lady Gaga.Perfect if: You genuinely believe the world needs to know the ins and outs of your life. That can be interpreted figuratively or literally as I have seen tweets about both delicious dinners and disgusting bowel movements. Avoid If: You have an inferiority complex and don't believe anyone would be interested in the minutiae of your life (if so, c'mon, that's so 20th century); you'll get personally offended if Ashton Kutcher doesn't follow you in return.
I'll admit that I'm being a bad journalist right now: I've never actually visited LinkedIn.com but I've heard it's a business networking site. And I'll be a bad journalist once again and bring my personal values into this article: We are college students. Therefore, we have no business on a business networking site. When I think of "business networking" I think of middle-aged folk in stuffy suits mingling around a cheese platter, name dropping and using those "buzz words" they tell you about at Career Services and generally being all around douche bags. Don't be a douchebag. Graduation is years (or, sorry '10s, months) away. We have the rest of our lives to worry about job networking. Perfect if: You've had a resume since sixth grade. Avoid If: Your resume consists of that one time last summer you mowed the lawn for your Grandma (your salary was a handful of Werther's Originals).
BoredatBaker
For a brief period in Winter and Spring 2007, egomaniacal Facebook was all but forgotten in favor of the anonymous BoredAtBaker. B@B assumed that we were all bored and eager to share juicy gossip about our classmates. For months, we forgot about that fairy tale the Admissions Office tells where we're all so kind and cooperative. B@B was where we went to unleash the id: Call that girl we hated a real skank or ask who the hottest '08 was. B@B was alive with posts by the minuteranging from the personally offensive to the utterly inane. Unfortunately, our collective consciousness caught up with us and the site shut down. Perfect if: You've ever felt the need to slander someone; you desire anonymous sex; you are in need of an ego-boost (To this day, no one knows who posted "KAREN IORIO IS THE HOTTEST '10" fifteen times a day for a week straight in 07W); you're human. Avoid if: You're a campus celebrity. There's a direct correlation between how well-known you are and the length of the thread detailing the reasons why you're not that cool.
