Social Networking Leaves Confines of the Computer

nytimes.com
April 30, 2007
Social Networking Leaves Confines of the Computer
By BRAD STONE and MATT RICHTEL

SAN FRANCISCO, April 29 — While Walter Zai was in South Africa 
watching the wild animals recently, people around the world were 
watching him.

Mr. Zai, a 37-year-old Swiss engineer, used his mobile phone to send 
out constant updates and images from his safari for an online audience.

“You feel like you are instantly broadcasting your own life and 
experiences to your friends at home, and to anyone in the world who 
wants to join,” said Mr. Zai, who used a new online service called 
Kyte to create his digital diary.

The social networking phenomenon is leaving the confines of the 
personal computer. Powerful new mobile devices are allowing people to 
send round-the-clock updates about their vacations, their moods or 
their latest haircut.

New online services, with names like Twitter, Radar and Jaiku, hope 
people will use their ever-present gadget to share (or, inevitably, 
to overshare) the details of their lives in the same way they have 
become accustomed to doing on Web sites like MySpace.

Unlike the older networking sites, which are still largely used on 
PCs, these new phone-oriented services are bringing the burgeoning 
culture of exhibitionism to more exotic and more personal locations. 
They are also contributing to the general barrage of white noise and 
information overload — something that even some participants say they 
feel ambivalent about.

(...) sees each of the world’s hundreds of millions of camera-phone owners as a potential television 
broadcaster.

“To run a television network used to require expensive cameras, a 
satellite connection and studios,” Mr. Graf said. “But the production 
costs have gone down to zero. Now you can share your life over a 
mobile phone, and someone is always connected, watching.”