Social Networking (Part-III)- Emerging Trends Of Social Networking

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Know About The Current Emerging Trends in Social Networking

Here we continue with the third part of our blog on social networking. Those who have missed our second blog can read it from Here. It will help to connect with the third part of the blog discussing about the emerging trends of social networking. Let us explore the blog to find out in more details. Quotes of Hilary Mason, chief data scientist, bitly, VentureBeat: 

"The things you share are things that make you look good, things which you are happy to tie into your identity".

While the popularity of social networking consistently rises, new uses for the technology are frequently being observed. Today's technologically savvy population requires convenient solutions to their daily needs. At the forefront of emerging trends in social networking sites is the concept of "real-time web" and "location-based". Real-time allows users to contribute contents, which is then broadcast as it is being uploaded—the concept is analogous to live radio and television broadcasts. Twitter set the trend for "real-time" services, wherein users can broadcast to the world what they are doing, or what is on their minds within a 140-character limit. Facebook followed suit with their "Live Feed" where users' activities are streamed as soon as it happens. While Twitter focuses on words, Clixtr, another real-time service, focuses on group photo sharing wherein users can update their photo streams with photos while at an event. Facebook, however, remains the largest photo sharing site—Facebook application and photo aggregator Pixable estimates that Facebook will have 100 billion photos by Summer 2012. In April 2012, the image-based social media network Pinterest had become the third largest social network in the United States. Companies have begun to merge business technologies and solutions, such as cloud computing, with social networking concepts. Instead of connecting individuals based on social interest, companies are developing interactive communities that connect individuals based on shared business needs or experiences. Many provide specialized networking tools and applications that can be accessed via their websites, such as LinkedIn. Others companies, such as Monster.com, have been steadily developing a more "socialized" feel to their career centre sites to harness some of the power of social networking sites. These more business related sites have their own nomenclature for the most part but the most common naming conventions are "Vocational Networking Sites" or "Vocational Media Networks", with the former more closely tied to individual networking relationships based on social networking principles.

Foursquare gained popularity as it allowed for users to check into places that they are frequenting at that moment. Gowalla is another such service that functions in much the same way that Foursquare does, leveraging the GPS in phones to create a location-based user experience. Clixtr, though in the real-time space, is also a location-based social networking site, since events created by users are automatically geotagged, and users can view events occurring nearby through the Clixtr iPhone app. Recently, Yelp announced its entrance into the location-based social networking space through check-ins with their mobile app; whether or not this becomes detrimental to Foursquare or Gowalla is yet to be seen, as it is still considered a new space in the Internet technology industry. Foursquare gained popularity as it allowed for users to check into places that they are frequenting at that moment. Gowalla is another such service that functions in much the same way that Foursquare does, leveraging the GPS in phones to create a location-based user experience. Clixtr, though in the real-time space, is also a location-based social networking site, since events created by users are automatically geotagged, and users can view events occurring nearby through the Clixtr iPhone app. Recently, Yelp announced its entrance into the location-based social networking space through check-ins with their mobile app; whether or not this becomes detrimental to Foursquare or Gowalla is yet to be seen, as it is still considered a new space in the Internet technology industry.

Continued in the next blog... 

Social Networking (Part-II)- Impact of Social Networking

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Find Out The Impact of Social Networking

Here we continue with the second part of our blog on social networking. Those who have missed our first blog can read it from Here. It will help to connect with the second part of the blog discussing about impact of social networking in our life. Let us explore the blog to find out in more details. Web-based social networking services make it possible to connect people who share interests and activities across political, economic, and geographic borders. Through e-mail and instant messaging, online communities are created where a gift economy and reciprocal altruism are encouraged through cooperation. Information is suited to a gift economy, as information is a non-rival good and can be gifted at practically no cost. Scholars have noted that the term "social" cannot account for technological features of the social network platforms alone. Hence, the level of network sociability should determine by the actual performances of its users. According to the communication theory of uses and gratifications, an increasing number of individuals are looking to the internet and social media to fulfill cognitive, effective, personal integrative, social integrative, and tension free needs. With Internet technology as a supplement to fulfill needs, it is in turn affecting everyday life, including relationships, school, church, entertainment, and family. Companies are using social media as a way to learn about potential employees' personalities and behavior. In numerous situations a candidate who might otherwise have been hired has been rejected due to offensive or otherwise unseemly photos or comments posted to social networks or appearing on a news feed. Facebook and other social networking tools are increasingly the aim of scholarly research. Scholars in many fields have begun to investigate the impact of social networking sites, investigating how such sites may play into issues of identity, privacy, social capital, youth culture, and education. Research has also suggested that individuals add offline friends on Facebook to maintain contact and often this blurs the lines between work and home lives. According to a study in 2015, 63% of the users of Facebook or Twitter in the USA consider these networks to be their main source of news, with entertainment news being the most seen. In the times of breaking news, Twitter users are more likely to stay invested in the story. In some cases when the news story is more political, users may be more likely to voice their opinion on a linked Facebook story with a comment or like, while Twitter users will just follow the sites feed and/ or retweet the article. 

A 2015 study shows that 85% of people aged 18 to 34 use social networking sites for their purchase decision making. While over 65% of people aged 55 and over rely on word of mouth. Several websites are beginning to tap into the power of the social networking model for philanthropy. Such models provide a means for connecting otherwise fragmented industries and small organizations without the resources to reach a broader audience with interested users. Social networks are providing a different way for individuals to communicate digitally. These communities of hypertext allow for the sharing of information and ideas, an old concept placed in a digital environment. In 2011, HCL Technologies conducted research that showed that 50% of British employers had banned the use of social networking sites/services during office hours. Research has provided us with mixed results as to whether or not a person's involvement in social networking can affect their feelings of loneliness. Studies have indicated that how a person chooses to use social networking can change their feelings of loneliness in either a negative or positive way. Some companies with mobile workers have encouraged their workers to use social networking to feel connected, educators are using it to keep connected with their students and individuals are benefiting from social networking to keep connect with already close relationships that they've developed under circumstances that would otherwise make it difficult to do so. Each social networking user is able to create a community that centres around a personal identity they choose to create online. In his book Digital Identities: Creating and Communicating the Online Self, Rob Cover argues that social networking's foundation in Web 2.0, high-speed networking shifts online representation to one which is both visual and relational to other people, complexing the identity process for younger people and creating new forms of anxiety. In 2016, news reports stated that excessive usage of social networking sites sites may be associated with an increase in the rates of depression, to almost triple the rate for non-social networking users. Experts worldwide have said that 2030 people who use social networking sites more have higher levels of depression than those who use social networking sites less. At least one study went as far as to conclude that the negative effects of Facebook usage are equal to or greater than the positive effects of face-to-face interactions. 

According to a recent article from Computers in Human Behavior, Facebook has also been shown to lead to issues of social comparison. Users are able to select which photos and status updates to post, allowing them to portray their lives in acclamatory manners. These updates can lead to other users feeling like their lives are inferior by comparison. Users may feel especially inclined to compare themselves to other users with whom they share similar characteristics or lifestyles, leading to a fairer comparison. Motives for these comparisons can be associated with the goals of improving oneself by looking at profiles of people who one feels are superior, especially when their lifestyle is similar and possible. One can also self-compare to make oneself feel superior to others by looking at the profiles of users who one believes to be worse off. However, a study by the Harvard Business Review shows that these goals often lead to negative consequences, as use of Facebook has been linked with lower levels of well-being; mental health has been shown to decrease due to the use of Facebook. Computers in Human Behavior emphasizes that these feelings of poor mental health have been suggested to cause people to take time off from their Facebook accounts; this action is called “Facebook Fatigue” and has been common in recent years.

Continued in the next blog...

Social Networking (Part-I)- How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

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Introduction and Overview of Social Networking Causing a Big Difference in our Life

In today's world, social networks have become the part and parcel of life of alomost every human being. It seems a little thing but it can make a big difference in our life. In words of Roxane Gay,

  

"Social networks are more than just repositories for trivial, snap judgments; they are more than merely convenient outlets for mindless joy and outrage. They offer more than the common ground and the solace we may find during culturally significant moments. Social networks also provide us with something of a flawed but necessary conscience, a constant reminder that commitment, compassion, and advocacy neither can nor ever should be finite".

Introducing Social Networking

A social networking service (also social networking site, or SNS) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relations with other people who share similar personal or career interests, activities, backgrounds or real-life connections. Social networking services vary in format and the number of features. They can incorporate a range of new information and communication tools, operating on desktops and on laptops, on mobile devices such as tablet computers and smartphones. They may feature digital photo/video/sharing and "web logging" diary entries online (blogging). Online community services are sometimes considered social-network services by programmers and users, though in a broader sense, a social-network service usually provides an individual-centered service whereas online community services are group-centered. Defined as "websites that facilitate the building of a network of contacts in order to exchange various types of content online," social networking sites provide a space for interaction to continue beyond in person interactions. These computer mediated interactions link members of various networks and may help to both maintain and develop new social ties. Social networking sites allow users to share ideas, digital photos and videos, posts, and to inform others about online or real-world activities and events with people in their network. While in-person social networking – such as gathering in a village market to talk about events – has existed since the earliest development of towns, the Web enables people to connect with others who live in different locations, ranging from across a city to across the world. Depending on the social media platform, members may be able to contact any other member. In other cases, members can contact anyone they have a connection to, and subsequently anyone that contact has a connection to, and so on. The success of social networking services can be seen in their dominance in society today, with Facebook having a massive 2.13 billion active monthly users and an average of 1.4 billion daily active users in 2017. LinkedIn, a career-oriented social-networking service, generally requires that a member personally know another member in real life before they contact them online. Some services require members to have a pre-existing connection to contact other members. The main types of social networking services contain category places (such as age or occupation or religion), means to connect with friends (usually with self-description pages), and a recommendation system linked to trust. One can categorize social-network services into three types: 

• Socializing social network services used primarily for socializing with existing friends (e.g., Facebook)
• Networking social network services used primarily for non-social interpersonal communication (e.g., LinkedIn, a career- and employment-oriented site)
• Social network services used primarily for helping users to find specific information or resources (e.g., Goodreads for books)

There have been attempts to standardize these services to avoid the need to duplicate entries of friends and interests (see the FOAF standard). A study reveals that India recorded world's largest growth in terms of social media users in 2013. A 2013 survey found that 73% of U.S. adults use social-networking sites.

Phase History

Early social networking on the World Wide Web began in the form of generalized online communities such as Theglobe.com (1995), Geocities (1994) and Tripod.com (1995). Many of these early communities focused on bringing people together to interact with each other through chat rooms, and encouraged users to share personal information and ideas via personal webpages by providing easy-to-use publishing tools and free or inexpensive webspace. Some communities – such as Classmates.com – took a different approach by simply having people link to each other via email addresses. PlanetAll started in 1996. In the late 1990s, user profiles became a central feature of social networking sites, allowing users to compile lists of "friends" and search for other users with similar interests. New social networking methods were developed by the end of the 1990s, and many sites began to develop more advanced features for users to find and manage friends. Open Diary, a community for online diarists, invented both friends-only content and the reader comment, two features of social networks important to user interaction. This newer generation of social networking sites began to flourish with the emergence of SixDegrees.com in 1997, followed by Open Diary in 1998, Mixi in 1999, Makeoutclub in 2000, Hub Culture and Friendster in 2002, and soon became part of the Internet mainstream. However, thanks to the nation's high Internet penetration rate, the first mass social networking site was the South Korean service, Cyworld, launched as a blog-based site in 1999 and social networking features added in 2001. It also became one of the first companies to profit from the sale of virtual goods. Friendster was followed by MySpace and LinkedIn a year later, and eventually Bebo. Friendster became very popular in the Pacific Islands. Orkut became the first popular social networking service in Brazil (although most of its very first users were from the United States) and quickly grew in popularity in India (Madhavan, 2007).Attesting to the rapid increase in social networking sites' popularity, by 2005, it was reported that Myspace was getting more page views than Google. Facebook, launched in 2004, became the largest social networking site in the world in early 2009.Facebook was first introduced as a Harvard social networking site, expanding to other universities and eventually, anyone. The term social media was introduced and soon became widespread.

Continued in the next blog...

Facebook Marketplace

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All you need to know about Facebook Marketplace and the new customization added to it 

Facebook is one of the largest social networking giant with billions of active users. Starting mainly as a social networking platform for connecting and interacting with new people throughout the world, it gradually expands itself to several other areas to provide its billions of users with amazing services and experiences. Thus apart from being the largest social platform for communicating and connecting with people, it also serves as a stable platform for advertisement, event promotion, pages, city guides, crisis response, recommendations, trending news, weather and lot more. Facebook is also ready to launch its new dating application to help users to find the love of their life and a long term relationship from among billions of users beyond their friendlist. Thus different types of services for fulfilling every needs of users, combined in a single platform has made Facebook one of the leading social giant all over the world. One such amazing service is the Facebook Marketplace.

Facebook Marketplace is an amazing service by the social giant providing an amazing common platform for buyers and sellers to meet and deal as per their requirements. The Marketplace consists of a 'Browse' menu where users can find different types of items displayed for sale based on their selected location and selected range surrounding the location. The 'Shop by Category' option enable users to search and buy products based on different categories like Home & Garden, Housing, Entertainment, Clothing & Accessories, Family, Electronics, Hobbies, Vehicles and Classifieds. These main categories are again divided into few sub-categories for ease of users to select product based on their requirement. The thumbnail pictures of the items are displayed with its name, the price and the location where it is available for sale. On clicking individual item another pop-up screen will appear where further details regarding the item and location of the seller is provided. There is also a "Ask for Details" button in the pop-up window and "Message Seller" button on the thumbnails so that buyer can directly request to seller for additional information and query regarding the product. 'Buying' and 'Selling' buttons keep track of the items and the chats with sellers and the messages from interested buyers respectively. You can also save an item in your 'Saved Items' list by bookmarking from the thumbnail images. The 'Sell Something' option enables sellers to add their own advertisement for any product in the Marketplace. Another new addition by Facebook to its Marketplace is the professional home services facility which will roll out very soon. There are many request for recommendations for in-home services mainly in the US which urged Facebook to launch this new service in its Marketplace. Now users will be able to hire a plumber, house cleaner, interior designer, contractor, electrician, home renovator and lot more for getting best in-home services from among the professionals in their surrounding area. Facebook is also collaborating with three companies namely Handy, Home Advisor and Porch for providing the best services to its users in this field.

Social Users Comprising Their Own Security By Themselves

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Billions of social media users are risking their own privacy  without their knowledge making their personal information vulnerable to leakage

A coin has two sides and the same analogy works for social media which has a good and a dark side. Billions of users throughout the world are using social media in different and multiple platforms and are often addicted to different applications of social media which can sometimes risk their privacy and personal information. Few months back billions of users witnessed the social giant Facebook involved in data breaching thus violating their own privacy policy and in later stages Twitter was also reported to have cause data breaching to third parties. Another incident was also recently witnessed by billions users where another social giant Twitter asked them to change their account password immediately followed by a bug in their internal system that may have saved the password in internal logs.

But the most vulnerable scenario is that billions of social media users are themselves exposing their personal information to threat by using different fun applications of different social media, mostly Facebook. Previous year an application named 'Saraha' went viral over the biggest social platform Facebook. Billions of users were using the application to send funny anonymous messages to anyone even if you do not have any account in the application. Users were finding it very fun and a source of great entertainment to get different amazing messages from anonymous persons. Naturally there was several misuse of it by using for spreading hatred, abusing and bullying. This year the new trend is 'Stulish' and it is now viral over Facebook. Billions of users are using it to get anonymous messages from different persons. It is already gaining the same popularity as 'Saraha'. Thus billions of users are threatening the security of their own personal information.

Not just 'Saraha' or 'Stulish', there are millions of fun applications over Facebook which are being used by billion of users. All these applications are third parties who are giving access to their product by logging using your Facebook account. We always get a pop-up messages while registering for the application and without reading we click on 'Allow' to start using that applications sooner. By clicking 'Allow' you give third party applications full access to your personal information over Facebook and also the Facebook profile. They sometimes post on your Facebook wall without asking for permissions. The personal data and information of billions of users are collected by means of these applications which can be misused against you. So we must control our emotion over Facebook and not just taste the fun of those applications. First you have to think in cool mind and read their terms and policies before giving them any permission of your account. Hope billions of social users will be more cautious over social media so that they do not make themselves vulnerable to the dark sides of social media.