Difference between revisions of "Social Networking"

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Social Networking involve online tools that are used for communication, collaboration, and sharing thoughts of individuals amongst friends. Popularity in these services continues to grow today, especially in younger generations as well as college students. People can post a large amount of information including personal information, images, music, and thoughts. Issues of privacy tend to be the main point of debate against these types of services, since online identity can be extremely hard to distinguish. Moral issues are also discussed because the services are popular for expressing personal emotions and feeling across a variety of topics.

History

Social networking services started in the late 1990s, with a limited number of users. The types of information that could be displayed were small, and most of the services were closed off to a certain demographic of people. Most users were considered early adopters to technology.

The first reported social networking service was SixDegrees.com. This site allowed users to create profiles, add friends by common interests/groups, and browse through those lists. Many other sites began to pop-up, the next big ones to be Friendster in 2002 and then MySpace in 2003. In 2003 the professional social networking site LinkedIn was launched - to date LinkedIn was the first American social-networking company to list an IPO. However, social-networking took a big leap forward with the launch of Facebook in 2004. Just a year later Facebook expanded to include high-school students, and in 2006 expanded to include anyone 13 years or older. Facebook then began its domination in social networking service users year after year. The micro-blogging service Twitter launched in 2006. In 2011 Google launched it's social network Google+ and it became the quickest growing social-network ever and it added over 10 million users in less than a month^[1]. Even though some of the earlier sites lost users because of new features offered on new products, the general theme of the services remained the same. Each site allows a user to form a profile, with whatever amount of information they wish, and then to connect with other friends and family members to share thoughts, stories, or any other interests.

Today

Social networking services have become an integral part of everyday life. The sites are popular for sharing images, videos, stories, and other friendly information across groups of friends. They are also useful for staying in touch with friends and family who may live in another state or attend another school. Daily news and current events are frequently posted about as well as localized events. Facebook, the largest of these networks, claims to have over 800 million active users, with 50% of these users logging in daily. Controversy surrounds the site, as far as privacy issues and other psychological issues that may result from use of social networking services.

List of Popular Social Networks

Pictured here are some of the more popular social networking sites.

The "Stumble!" button in the upper left-hand corner

Use of Social Networks by Businesses

Businesses have placed an emphasis on social networks as a means of marketing. The three most popular social networks for business use are Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Social network marketing has grown extremely rapidly over the past decade, so much that 94% of all businesses that have a marketing department use social media. In addition 54% of those businesses who have used social media for over 3 years have have reported a increase in sales of that time period.^[4]

Ethical Issues

Many ethical issues arise as a result of social networking. Suddenly, information that was intended to be private, or shared among an intimate group of people is accessible by complete strangers. Individual rights issues as far as what content is viewable and by who is difficult for individuals to control. Our idea of what is right to share and who to share it with becomes hazy in an online, social environment. Issues such as cyber-bullying, online stalking, trolling and other malicious behavior is hard to monitor within social networking services, as it is easy for a user to create a false profile or impersonate another person. There is not confirmation of identity, unless there is a connection to the real world. Ethics surrounding the common good of all people is also an issue. Some user might join the site to create a group and connect to people for good causes, such as cancer awareness or to promote good qualities. It would be just as easy for a user to create a group for such bad actions as well. Questions of honesty and accountability are present in these services as well. Since little is needed to confirm the accuracy on a user's profile, a person can get away with saying anything about themselves in order to connect to the right people. Anonymity is a large problem underlying all of these issues because there is a lack of accountability in social networks.

Privacy

As with any large network of people on the web, social networking services find their privacy policies under attack on a daily basis. Some people believe that too much information is available and that information should be private unless otherwise selected. Opponents say that individual persons are responsible for every piece of information they post, and that if they disagree with the policies, they should stay away from the site. For example, college students are finding they have to limit their privacy settings for their online pictures. Companies are starting to evaluate candidates through Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networking sites. In order to maintain a level of privacy for their pictures containing alcohol and other deterrents that would steer potential employers away from hiring candidates, students and professionals are learning how to manage privacy settings on their social networking accounts quickly. The dilemma of accountability for managing privacy settings on social networking sites then falls on both the creators and members of the network. Designers and companies are implementing more innovative privacy settings daily in order to allow users to control the visibility of their profiles.

Cyber-bullying

A variety of methods of Cyberbullying exist and are employed in social networks online.

Fake Profiles

Fake profiles have become more of a problem as more prominent figures enter the social networking sphere. The most common social network that is abused is Twitter because fake accounts have become very commonplace and acceptable.

Google+ requires users to use their real names and it cannot be change.

Future

The future of social networking services remains to be unknown, but new innovations are being created on a daily basis as far as how big the social networks can get. Connecting to friends, employers, and family are good, but joining together for awareness on hot topic issues, put beside a page where friends can decide where they want to eat together just hints at the enormity the services can have. There will no doubt be more of these services created, especially to individualized interests, as people try to keep parts of their lives separate.

The Stop Online Privacy Act

Under the SOPA, the entire future of social networking websites could be at risk. Due to the high volume of constant user submission (especially on the larger-scale websites like Facebook), it is theoretically possible that if just one of those submissions contained a link to an illegal download the entire website could be shut down^[5]. The implications for the economy of a website like Facebook, which hosts thousands of third-party apps and is quickly becoming the primary mode of distribution for many businesses who operate through social network-mediated apps, being shut down could be disastrous.

See Also

• Experience Project
• Facebook
• Privacy in Social Networking
• Social Networking Services
• Twitter
• Online Dating
• Spotify

References

1. ↑ http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/27/google-minus/
2. ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delicious_(website)
3. ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flickr
4. ↑ The Developing Role of Social Media in the Modern Business World
5. ↑ http://www.dailydot.com/politics/reddit-alexis-ohanian-stop-online-piracy-act/

http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html

http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

http://edu.udym.com/ethics-of-social-networking/

http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/submitted/social-networking.html

External Links

• Facebook's Homepage
• Twitter's Homepage

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