Social Networking (Part-V)- Cons Of Social Media Badly Affecting Human Lifestyle

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Know About The Cons Of Social Networking Sites Affecting Our Normal LifeStyle

Here we continue with the last part of our blog on social networking. Those who have missed our fourth blog can read it from Here. It will help to connect with the last part of the blog discussing about the cons of social networking sites which in turn is affecting the normal lifestyle of mankind. Let us explore the blog to find out in more details. 

Technological advancements have gifted mankind with numerous products for the betterment of their lifestyle but everything has its own pros and cons. The same theory is also applicable to social networking sites or social media but it is entirely in our hand whether we adopt its positive or negative side. We often become victims of the negative sides unconsciously which lead to disastrous consequences in our normal and happy life. In our previous blog we emphasized on the positive sides of social networks which have opened a new doorway for advertisement or promotion of any profession and business, now popularly known as Social Promotion. Social promotion has emerged to be one of the leading marketing strategy which can provide huge boost to any profession or business as it helps to reach the most preferred and targeted audience for your business or profession very easily with few clicks. But on the other hand the negative sides of social media is badly affecting the normal lifestyle of mankind. The curse of technology is that now even a kid is handling mobile, computers and tabs with internet facilities and they are diving deep into the world of social media without even consent of their parents. Not only to blame the kids, but teenager, young and adult of every age have more or less become addicted to social media and it is an undeniable fact that social networking is badly addictive. Once people fall for this addiction, they are wasting maximum time of their day spending in different social media sites thus hampering their daily life and normal lifestyle. Making friendship with  completely unknown people and talking with them gives an exciting feeling as well as fun but sometimes these so-called social friendships are proving fatal for many people. People of all age are becoming victims with the kids and teenagers worse affected. An open social networking platform invites many rogue, fake and ill-minded people with dirty intentions and it is really impossible to judge someone just by talking and seeing some pictures of that person over social media. They will present themselves in the best way to avoid any doubt in our mind about them and with time compelling us to meet face to face. Many people fall in love over social media just by talking and seeing pictures and mostly end up with disastrous consequences like cheat, fraud, launder, harassment and abuse. Social networks is increasing depression, anxiety and loneliness among people as they are more inclined to their social friends rather than their real-life friends. People are becoming mechanized and unsocial and they prefer to stick to social networking friends sitting at home rather than going out and spending some time with real-life friends. This in turn is increasing the distance among close people, friends and families. The work output of people of all age is greatly deteriorating as people are spending more time in social media even while they are in their workplaces. Social media is gradually increasing the distance among real friends, colleagues and families in exchange of the peoples whom you have never met and are trying to represent their best personality and image in social sites to deceive others. Family and relationship problems are in great rise for the people who spend their maximum time over social media. Kinds and teenagers are getting wrong ideology from social media as they have become more a platform of hatred, abuse, discrimination and many other anti-social things rather than for which it was created. Some ill minded people are making money from social media in different ways like by downloading pictures from different social media profiles and selling them to pornographic sites without even the knowledge of the individual whose images have been misused or by deceiving individual with false promises and looting them. Some people are using social media to spread hatred, abuse, riots and violence by misguiding other people, hiding in their own home and sometimes faking their identity or putting the blame on others. Thus the current scenario is that social media are causing great turbulence in our normal and happy lifestyle by filling them more with negativity rather than a single bit of positive attitude. The cyber-security cells of all country have become greatly active to prevent such negativity and any misuse of social networking sites.

These things do not indicate that we should completely stop using social media. In many cases social media is helping to reunite with long lost friends, families and relationships which have discontinued because of increasing distances. Everything will have its negative side but it solely depends on us whether we want to accept its positive or negative side. Social media is a great source of refreshment and fun now-a-days but it should be used wisely and cautiously. Kids and teenagers should strictly be not allowed to get in touch with social media before they turned 18 years of age. For adults using social media. they are quite mature and sensible enough not to get addicted to such things. Our mature thinking, analysis, cautious and responsible use can make social media a fun, interesting and better place than it is now. We cannot control the negativity but we must be aware enough to keep a huge distance from those negativity and be a responsible social media user for normal and happy lifestyle.

Social Networking (Part-IV)- Pros Of Social Media In Any Profession And Business

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Find Out The Pros Of Social Media To Mankind

Now we continue with the fourth part of our blog on social networking. Those who have missed our third blog can read it from Here. It will help to connect with the fourth part of the blog discussing about the pros of social networking to mankind. Let us explore the blog to find out in more details. 

Social Networking or social media has become one of the most popular and emerging trend in the world of internet over past few years. Numerous social networking sites have emerged with their own unique features to provide users with amazing social media experiences. Orkut started as one of the first social networking site of its kind which gained immensely popularity for many years and with time it was replaced by the present social media giant Facebook. Facebook as a social networking site has become the part and parcel of almost every human being and they cannot live a single day without spending enough time over Facebook. Facebook emerged to be the social networking giant due to its extraordinary features which gained popularity among users causing a massive transition in the type of social networking experience started with Orkut. Other popular social networks have also emerged with time like Twitter, Linkedin, Google Plus, Instagram etc which have provided users with their own unique features. But Facebook occupied the maximum market of social networking due to their broadest interaction and communication platform. Twitter on the other hand provides very limited interaction and communication and is mostly popular among celebrities and renowned personalities. Linkedin provides a business and employment oriented social networking. Google Plus provides a overall social networking experience while Instagram provides a photo and video sharing based social networking. Thus every social networking platforms are unique in their own kind and are great sources to reach  the broadest possible audiences.

Social promotions have emerged to be one of the leading technique over past few years to expand any profession and business in a wider range by reaching maximum number of targeted audiences. It has become the best way to gain broad visibility of any profession and business and doing in proper way can lead to huge prosperity in the respective fields. Almost every people now-a-days are engaged to one or more than one social networking platforms and thus social media can be used for highlighting the selling points of any profession and business based on the need of the users. Social promotion using social networking sites can be done in both free and paid way. The free way requires much effort in promotion while the paid way requires money but it saves lot of efforts. Free social promotion can be done using Facebook by creating a respective professional or business page and you can earn likes and permanent followers to your page by inviting people from your friend list to the page, sharing the page and the updates posted in the page in your own timeline, different large and active groups related to respective business or profession and in other pages. Twitter and Linkedin promotion on the other hand can be done by creating pages and sharing the updates daily on your profile and others. Google Plus promotion can be done similar to that of Facebook by creating pages, gain followers, sharing updates on different big and active communities relevant to the business or profession for which the page is made. This self promotion at zero cost offers better visibility and outreach but the major consequences are- tiring process, chances of spamming and account suspension and reaching less number of targeted audiences and more number of irrelevant audiences. These consequences have been overcome in the paid promotions. All the social networks provides their own platform for advertisement related to any profession or business and their advance artificial intelligence systems help to reach the targeted and most suitable audiences for the respective profession and business. These advertisement appears in the profile of the users who can be your best probable audience based on the criteria filled up during promotion. The daily budget and total number of days to run the promotion are flexible enough and can be adjusted according to need. The plans and pricing varies for different social networks with Facebook giving the most flexible plans and pricing. Thus social promotion is the main pros of social networking and the best social promotion strategy should be a mixed combination of free and paid promotion. While in paid promotion there is no worry as artificial intelligence do the rest of the things but in free promotion special care must be taken to prevent spamming and more effort have to be put to reach targeted audiences. 

Continued in the next blog...

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...

WhatsApp Introducing Payment Feature

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WhatsApp to introduce its payment services for Indian users by next week 

WhatsApp is one of the best platform for connecting with known as well as unknown people all over the world and is currently owned by Facebook Inc. This chat application provides an easier means of communicating and several other functionalities. Though in most of the cases, WhatsApp is mostly restricted among known connections as sharing of mobile number is necessary for connecting in WhatsApp and it is not preferred by most of the people. The popularity of WhatsApp is due to its amazing functionalities comprising of one to one chat, group chat, voice call, video call, sharing of documents, pictures, audios, videos, location and contact information. Thus it is a complete social platform within itself where users have their own profile, can change their profile pictures, can put texts and pictures as their status updates and can also look into the same for other users. It also provides the facility to snooze message updates from particular person or group and allow to block other users who are not comfortable. This has made WhatsApp one of the most popular social messaging application and it is now used by billions of users worldwide.  

WhatsApp is now all set to roll out its payment services for all Indian users as early as by next week, after overcoming several obstacles since its first introduction of its beta version in February for limited users as a pilot project. India is gradually moving towards cashless transactions and the cashless transaction facility is currently provided by several platforms and WhatsApp will be a new and most popular addition among them. The WhatsApp payment feature will enable users to send and receive money through the chat application which is based on Unified Payments Interface or popularly known as UPI of the Government of India. The new payment services can be accessed from the Payment option under WhatsApp Settings. To enable the smooth operation and processing of its payment services, WhatsApp is partnering with four banks namely Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and State Bank of India. Though State Bank of India will join at later stages when the functionality is fully operational in its place so WhatsApp has decided to roll out its feature currently with the other three banks as there is very tough competition from its rivals. Currently the market of digital payment services in India is mainly captured by payment applications like Paytm, Phone Pe, Mobikwik and Google Tezz. But WhatsApp payment services which started with 1 million users in February in its beta version indicates that it will hit the market hard after its final launch and will threaten the market share of current popular payment service applications. The main reason behind this can be attributed to the social networking platform of WhatsApp beside its payment services which is currently not provided by any of the payment applications. The main delay in releasing the final version since the launch of its beta version is due to the time taken to obtain necessary clearances required as pointed out few months ago by Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the founder of Paytm. He alleged that the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the governing and controlling body for retail payments and solutions in India, has allowed WhatsApp to operate its payment service without offering all the mandatory and regulatory features. The privacy policy of WhatsApp revealed that it was sharing all payment information with Facebook which violate the guidelines of NPCI for digital payment in India. Now with a clean cheat, WhatsApp is ready to roll out the payment feature for all Indian users by next week. The social networking platform combined with payment services for 200 million active users all over India will give a very tough competition to the already existing popular payment services as they all are lacking the social networking facility.