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RS. 20 | ISSUE 2 | Feb 4-10, 2010 www.fridayweekly.com.np SUBSCRIBER COPY ������AND MORE ���������������������������������� ECS MEDIA PUBLICATION EVERYTHURSDAY 3 5 8 10 17 18 PAGE3 PEOPLE METROPOLIS HALFWAY GIZMO PROPERTY Talk of Town One Question Bazaar Buzz The Female Brain Boys with Toys For Comfort or Quotes straight from the People opine on the gov- NANO, the world’s chepest “the info-graphics on the func- Two men dish out stories Commercialism horses’ mouth. We give ernment’s decision to open car, all set to hit the Nepali tions of a female brain clarifies confessing their love affair Everyone seems to want you the talk of the town. doors to foreign banks. market very soon. “why girls will always be girls. with their sporty rides. to be a part of this deal. ANTI-SOCIAL NETWORKING The ever growing community of social networking sites have the Kathmanduites in their grips. SAMRIDDHI RAI takes a peek into the lives of this new-found set of addicts. ushma Shrestha, 34, “When I first started out, I used was another one of those people my FB account and hers too,” a finance officer at to have real good fun. Connecting who was on the ‘social-network- Prajwal stated. a reputed INGO in to old pals and making new ones, I ing-sites’ bandwagon. In fact But Sushma and Prajwol’s girl- Kathmandu, recently thought it made me socially active. he had an interesting story to friend aren’t the only ones among had an ugly breakup I started posting comments and share. “I opened a FB account this ever-growing breed of ‘ad- with her favorite so- uploading photos, which kept me for my girlfriend but she soon dicts’. And if a study conducted Scial-networking site – Facebook occupied for two or three hours in started giving more importance by Nielsen Online is to be be- (FB). It all began when a friend the morning. Even at work, I used to the site than the real people in lieved, the amount of time people introduced the popular site into to minimize my FB tab to check it her life. This is when I realized using social networking sites has her life. The parting of ways out whenever I had free time. This how these sites cater to people’s tripled since last year. This means with her new-found love was the went on until, one day, my husband innate human nature that yearns that there are as many social- result of her extreme obsession scolded me regarding my growing for publicity – to be known and networking sites addicts being for the enigmatic site. Sushma obsession, which made me decide to be heard. No doubt it’s a great ‘born’ everywhere, everyday. So just couldn’t get enough of it, to disengage myself from FB alto- platform for fast communication much so that psychologists have and her dates with FB used to gether,” Sushma said. but, sometimes, it merely leaves introduced a diagnosis called FAD extend all day long till the wee Prajwal Tulachan, 32, execu- you “public” more than anything (Facebook Addiction Disorder) hours of the night. tive director of Mystic Ventures, else. This is when I deactivated as a new kind of addiction. turn to page 2 for more of it! 2 cover Issue 2 Feb 4 -10, 2010 A few years ago, HiFive, an- MOST OFFICES HAVE BLOCKED Internet and have no clue about other such site, was popular the existence of virtual societ- Facebook Statistics among Internet savvies in Nepal. SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES IN A BID ies, experts predict and we firm- COMPANY FIGURES But it was only after the advent TO DO AWAY WITH DISTRACTIONS ly believe that the number of n More than 350 million ac- of Facebook that the trend to so- THAT RESULT IN DETERIORATING people joining these communi- tive users cialize in the virtual world gained ties is in fact growing at, to put n 50% of our active users momentum like never before. PERFORMANCES OF THEIR EMPLOYEES. it mildly, an alarming rate. log on to Facebook on So what makes FB, or any And it’s not only individuals. any given day other social networking site for Households, organizations, in- n More than 55 million sta- that matter, so addictive? Did You Know? accounts deleted without any stitutions and offices have come tus updates posted each explanation. day A psychiatrist at West London n Syria doesn’t allow FB use. under its “near fatal” attack as n More than 2.5 billion pho- Mental Hospital, Dr. Himanshu n More than 60% of men and well. Most offices have blocked tos uploaded to the site Tyagi, maintains, “People are women have used FB to stalk Facebook–The Movie social networking sites in a bid each month likely to find the real world bor- their ex. Directed by David Fincher, the to do away with distractions n More than 700,000 local ing and will look to more extreme movie titled “The Social Network” that result in deteriorating per- n FB removes photos that businesses have active is slated for release in October types of behavior to get a kick show a mother breastfeeding formances of their employees. Pages on Facebook out of life and that in the virtual her child. 2010. It is based on the life and The office of Dreams and Ideas world things happen much fast- n People with strange sound- success of the founders of the site. located in Teku that blocks So- AVERAGE USER FIGURES er, relationships are begun and ing names (for instance, ‘Le- The movie will most likely fall un- cial Networking sites, especially n Average user has 130 ended with the click of a mouse boa’ or ‘Allien’) can have their der the comedy drama category. Facebook, until 4 in the after- friends on the site and you can reinvent yourself in noon is one such example. n Average user sends 8 your online profile whenever you “We let our employees surf friend requests per month want to.” He goes on to explain, three-year-old Asish Syangden, It’s a fact that like Asish, or FB only during the last hour of n Average user spends “This is putting users, especially a senior program coordinator at any other person with access our office time,” said the found- more than 55 minutes per the youngsters, at risk as they Kantipur FM. to the Internet at this time and ing director of the company, day on Facebook no longer value their real world “I wasn’t a member of Face- age are destined to be a part of Abhinav Kasaju. n Average user clicks the identities as much as their online book for a long time even after some social networking site or Colleges and schools that Like button on 9 pieces of ones.” it had become the ‘in’ thing to the other. Facebook, of course, provide Internet, too, have been content each month “Perhaps it is the thrill of get- do. Many of my friends persis- being the most popular among compelled to ban these sites for n Average user writes 25 ting to express what one wants tently tried to get me into it. I fi- them all. similar reasons. comments on Facebook content each month to without having to confront nally logged on to it after much And they’re not alone. Al- Bandana Maskey, a 12th grad- people in person that makes persuasion, especially from my though a large portion of the er, who swore off her favorite INTERNATIONAL GROWTH social-networking sites so in- wife, and there has been no look- Nepali crowd and people in networking site to concen- n More than 70 translations teresting,” expressed thirty- ing back since then,” he added. global terms are far from the trate on her studies, of course, available on the site n About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States n Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations MOBILE n There are more than 65 million active users cur- rently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices. n People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on Facebook than non-mobile users. n There are more than 180 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Face- book mobile products couldn’t fully shun it altogether. So she made a pact with her friends who, like her, were suf- fering from the same addiction, to log on to their beloved sites only on Friday evenings. “I now see a possibility to pass my plus two exams with good grades” she said. This addiction, like any oth- er, has its ill effects on humans. According to Dr. Aric Sigman, a psychologist featured in Biolo- gist (a journal of the Institute of Biology), “Social Network- ing Sites like Facebook and MySpace could increase the risk of serious illnesses (like cancer and heart disease) because they deprive the levels of face-to- face communication necessary for humans.” He called it “increased iso- lation” whose negative effects include altering the way genes work, upsetting immune re- sponses, hormone levels and the function of arteries and, in some cases, even impairing mental performance. And yet, there is no stopping the number of people fast being sucked into the social-network- ing site’s venomous web. “Yes, that is very true. We are indeed enslaved to this 21st-cen- tury marvel,” Asish Syangden, concluded. n talk of the town page3 “Bikes and wives are not to be shared.

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