Networking sites here to stay: can't scrap that

MESSAGE BOARD: Show guests were unanimous: safety is best regulation on the Net.

                

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Making friends and finding love in real life is passé: the Internet is where people socialise.

Join a social networking website and make friends with total strangers all around the world. Adnan Patrawala, a 16-year-old Mumbai resident, made friends with three persons on Orkut. The ‘friends’ kidnapped him for ransom and murdered him when the police got close to them.

Social networking sites have got bad publicity recently for slanderous comments and communities on political leaders and women and the utter freedom their members get in portraying false identities.

Are social networking sites crossing the limit or is it that people are misusing them? CNN-IBN’s Anuradha SenGupta asked this on a special show called Rules Of The Orkut Age.

The panel comprised Rashmi Bansal, editor of campus magazine Jam, clinical psychologist Seema Hingorani, lawyer Mohit Kapoor, Ashish Patil, General Manager of MTV India, and Shailesh Rao, Managing Director, Sales and Operations, for Google India.

The good, bad and ugly

Don’t shoot the Internet, for it’s just the messenger, said Rao. “The Internet is an information medium, and information contributes to learning and understanding. Our company and others who participate it in the Internet believe that it has been largely been used for good. There will always be bad elements but it is the job of all of us in society to do what we can to make sure that it continues to be safe tool,” said Rao.

People are free to assume identities and set up groups on networking sites. To some that may seem extreme liberty. As Bansal explained: website “users are free with their emotions and opinions, and they do not even take it seriously. But somebody who is a new visitor to a website and comes across a community called ‘I Love Dawood’ may actually think that the members are fans of Dawood Ibrahim (the gangster) and perhaps terrorists too”.

MTV has selected Orkut as its Youth Icon of the Year—Patil said his company takes pride in conferring the award to the website.