A latest trend in the online space is 'social networking', a system that allows users to create and develop friendships in the online environment.
This may sound a little dry, but sites such as Facebook and Myspace allow you to catch up with existing friends and make new ones with people who have similar interests
Here is Livestock reporter Emily Padfield's experience of using Facebook:
"My name is Emily and I'm a Facebookaholic.
There, I've said it. I'm positive I am not the only one with such an addiction.
Some of my friends have it even worse than me. Whether you are at work, college, school or in the farm office, the temptation to "just check what people are up to" is often too great to ignore.
The first online networking site I joined was Bebo, partly due to mounting peer pressure when studying for exams - any excuse. The Bebo bug spread soon we were creating Bebo profiles for lecturers who knew nothing about them and I am sure this affected exam grades across the country, not only at college.
A more grown-up version of Bebo (and somewhat easier to use) is Facebook. I originally joined to keep in touch with friends from Canada, and to this end it is an amazingly simple and effective way of sharing photos, gossip and news at any time of the day, from and to anywhere in the world. I can now chat regularly with friends from every continent. Not sure if it's really what I get paid to do during the day, though".
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