I got the idea for this post after reading how Drug dealers and software developers (old link that no longer works in 2019) 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 toilet papering 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. Getting bought by Google, Yahoo or some other huge company |