JUST a few years ago, you could hear people say, “Call me” when they want to keep in touch. Later, it evolved into “E-mail me,” and with the explosion of mobile phones, “Text me.”

Thanks to the Internet, people are now connecting and interacting with friends and family through online social networks.

Just to give you an idea how big social networks are, MySpace has over 184.1 million members, according to “5 Facts about Social Networking Sites” published by Pipl website, an online search engine for people.

Music

MySpace is an online social network, which was initially directed at musicians and fans, but is now one of the more popular online communities for sharing and publishing music.

MySpace is by far the largest online community with 157 member profiles created every minute, according to the Pipl article. But that’s just one. There is a long list of social networks and listing them can already make one article.

One of the fast-growing online social networks is Facebook, which was created by Mark Zuckerberg and co-founders Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin in their Harvard dorm rooms in 2004.

Community

But before we jump into the discussion of more numbers, you might be wondering, “What is an online social network?” Simply put, it’s an online community. When the Internet was invented back in the 1960s, it was really meant to connect computers and naturally, people.

As the cost of computers went down, and the Internet became less of the geeks’ domain, the online world found ways to organize itself. When e-mail was invented, newsgroups and “listservs” emerged, allowing people to form communities around topics of interest.

Up until now, I’m still a member of a few newsgroups in Yahoo! and Google. Listservs are still around but they’ve been replaced by more user-friendly services like Googlegroups. Another form of online community that emerged during the early years of the Internet was the bulletin board services, a text-based online forum.

Classmates

People freely discussed different topics under this virtual nook. You could choose from a host of topics.

When the web arrived, other forms of online communities were born. In 1995, Classmates.com was created. This was an online community of former schoolmates.

Two years later, SixDegrees.com was established, which allowed people without direct relations to connect online. These early forms of online social networks allowed registered users to create profiles and send e-mail messages to anyone on their “friends list” and find other people with similar interests, geography, tastes, among other things.

Since online profiles included very personal information, people eventually befriended people based on common likes.

Global village

In short, online social networks became Marshall McLuhan’s version of the Global Village, except that it is online.

Now, let’s go back to Facebook, which was created seven years after SixDegrees.com. Here are some fast facts again: More than 150 million active users.

An average user has 120 friends (I have close to 700 friends to date.). People all over the world spend more than three billion minutes on Facebook each day. That’s a lot of time for something that exists in the virtual ether.

Obama inauguration

Why are we going gaga over Facebook?

Before US President Barack Obama’s inauguration, CNN and Facebook announced an interesting experiment. This experiment eventually allowed millions of people to witness the inauguration online. OK, that’s not new.

But what Facebook added was a new dimension to online interactivity. As we witnessed Obama make a mistake while taking his oath, I saw some of my Facebook friends reacting to it in a special window right next to the online streaming video of Obama.

Historic

People were chatting through a Facebook application snapped into the streaming video coming from CNN Online. I found at least 20 of my Facebook friends located in different parts of the country and the world chatting and witnessing this historic event. That couldn’t have been possible without Facebook.

As I was writing this, a new e-mail message came into my inbox. It was a message from Facebook notifying me that one of my Baguio friends was commenting on an old photo posted by another friend several weeks ago. We were all guessing when the photograph was taken.

Interactive

Similar to the more popular predecessors like Friendster and MySpace, Facebook is dramatically changing how we interact with friends, family and even colleagues at work. Apart from what I already mentioned, Facebook has become an endless canvass of online interactivity.

You can play games, invite friends to events, post a bulletin, start a newsgroup or an online campaign, and share photos, blogs and other content.

Photo sharing is one of the top activities in this online social network, apart from sharing videos you find on YouTube.

Young, mostly women

One interesting fact from “5 Facts about Social Networking Sites” is that the younger population of online social network users is predominantly women. Another fact: those joining social networks are getting younger in Asia.

These trends indicate that kids today are growing in a world where online social networks are now part of their lives. Just like the mobile phone phenomenon, online social networks are changing the way we live, work and play.

So the next time, one tells you, “Facebook me,” don’t fret. They just want to connect.