12 Ways Social Networks are like High School
I got the idea for this post after reading how Drug dealers and software developers were similar. As I do come from a web developer background – I found it quite amusing (and quite sad at the end) and wondered if I could do the same for Social Media.
Below is my feeble attempt to compare High School and Social Networks – enjoy.
| High School | Social Networks | |
| 1.Wanting to be the Prom King/Queen | 1.He/she with the most friends is cool | |
| 2.Telling everyone that you are great friends with the “plastics” and other “cool” kids | 2.Adding all of the “Alist” personalities to your friends list | |
| 3.Leaving post it notes in or on lockers | 3.Leaving comments and notes on someone’s profile | |
| 4.Joining an after hours school club | 4.Having “meetups” that revolve around your favorite network/app | |
| 5.Liking that exchange student so much you take the language class that they speak | 5.Liking some application that you create a mashup using APIs in some programming language you don’t know | |
| 6.Writing for your High School newspaper | 6.Starting a site to cover everything in the world about Social Networks, the sites, the apps and everything else | |
| 7.Being a part of the school’s AV Club | 7.Knowing how all the new apps work and trying to explain them to everyone | |
| 8.Getting kicked out of school | 8.Getting banned from a network | |
| 9.Showing off or talking about your new car/phone/gadget | 9.Always asking for or talking about invites to the new beta | |
| 10.Having mommy and daddy buy you something better than the other gloating kids | 10.Showing off your alpha invite via your blog | |
| 11.Getting your friends together and tping the school | 11.Getting your friends together for a DoS against some network/site/app | |
| 12.Hooking up with the Prom Queen or King | 12.Damn – got me there. :( |
If there are any that just plain out suck – let me know. If you can think of any others that fit, feel free to add them via commenting.
I also have to apologize for breaking down and having a “X things you can do” or “X ways to do X” post title. It was bound to happen eventually I guess.
UPDATE
I was just reading this post again and it hit me – what #12 could be:
12. Hooking up with the Prom Queen or King = 12. Getting bought by Google, Yahoo or some other huge company