What attracts you to social networking sites and what features are still missing?

[:-D]

what attracts me to social networking sites is it is another way to stay in touch with friends and family. they offer a way to meet people and find out information. what better way to find out about a company or location than to ask someone who works or lives there.

if two sites are similar i would choose the place that has similar values and goals to my own. if i want to stay in touch with certain friends and they are only on one website then i might consider joining that one. whereas if i want to meet people then i am more willing to try a site my friends are not on.

there need to be better safeguards for privacy and safety. some information in someone's profile would be difficult to confirm but other things would not be as hard. in addition, some information is not as relevant and does not matter as much if a person exagerates to make themselves sound better. age is a key area minors are often able to get into content that may be age inappropriate. they can put themselves at risk for being targeted. granted parents need to know what their children are doing, but many sites have insufficient safegards to keep children safe. even adults are not always safe because social networking sites do not use the available technology and try to make safety a priority.

profiles can be personalized, but only to an extent. some questions only allow for certain answers but do not allow people to type their own more appropriate answer or skip the question.

most sites allow you to personalize your profile, send email, chat, send instant messages, save profiles/ make a list of friends. sites that do not have all the "usual" features would benefit from adding them.