Social Networking

What ways social networking can be used by the corporate and otherwise: For a corporate, social network marketing can grow business marketing profits. It can adds human element to the business or product. Comparing with expensive ads, it also can create buzz around your product, service or brand while in a cheaper price. When social network marketing engages with customers directly while hanging  out online, it can create customer loyalty and trust. Social networking sites are online communities where friends can interact and share information with each other, which can make the business or product word-of-mouth. Social networking can also help corporations to hire people. As described in "Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting" by Frank Langfitt, it's so easy just by typing keywords into a search engine that helps Crawford scrape the entire network to dig out high-quality candidates whom she can't find elsewhere. Social networking can be used for election campaign, organizing activities, events or groups to showcase issues and opinions and make a wider audience aware of them. In the article of "How Obama Tapped Into Social Networks’ Power" By DAVID CARR, "by bolting together social networking applications under the banner of a movement, they created an unforeseen force to raise money, organize locally, fight smear campaigns and get out the vote that helped them topple the Clinton machine and then John McCain and the Republicans." Social networking can be used to hone debating and discussion skills to help users develop public ways of presenting themselves. Users are content creators, managers and distributors in social networking sites, which encourages and supports people's creativity, as well as their collaboration skills.

Benefits to society:
Social networking is the easiest way to stay connected with friends, co-works and bosses that helps create a harmony environment. It is a means of communication that friends and co-workers can share their up-to-date information. Social networking sites have certain topics and interests and therefore it can facilitate to make friends with similar interests and goals. With constant and updated news information, social networking sites allow readers to reach information quickly. Such efficiency can help drive social productivity. Social networking profiles allow users to post anything and can be seen by anybody, so it's a means of free advertising. People are more willing to "speak" in this virtual world and it encourages creative expression. Social networking massively decreases the size of the world. It creates a global exposure and this has made the flow of ideas and information an easier process. It also allows users to band together to create strong alliances to fight for a certain cause and therefore creates a positive impact on the world.

"Dark side" of social networking:
Young people indulging in the social networking sites may not concentrate on their study. In order to facilitate their social networking communication, they may ask their parents to purchase expensive handheld devices. If parents cannot satisfy them, they may seek for other negative solutions. For most of people who are not active in the social networking, their common concern is privacy issue. They know that the information in the network is spread so widely and spontaneously that their privacy may expose to everybody globally. In the "Who Cares About Facebook Privacy? Students Do" By Marc Parry, "The researchers, Danah Boyd and Eszter Hargittai, report that most Facebook users modified their privacy settings at least once in 2009 and that 'engagement with privacy settings increased significantly' between 2009 and 2010." Privacy disclosures not only bring troubles to users, but also may create potential crime issues. In the virtual world, free flow of information can be used for good, but it can also be used for ill. It may induce criminals and criminal behaviors. The Police, the intelligence services and industry have to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.

The way these technologies might evolve in the future:
Smart phones become more ubiquitous. Software and webware companies know that if their products are not mobile-enabled, they will lose the battle. The web browser will get much smarter to fit handheld devices. Web marketing will continue to be consumer-centric and involve highly customer interaction. Social networking will become pervasive and privacy issues will continue to cause problems.