What fascinating venue are we going to explore together today? Today we enter into the world of "Social Networking". No I am not talking about the lame movie with Justin Timberlake; what I am talking about is a whole plethora of websites that seem to be expanding every day.
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| A Selection of Social Networking Site Logos |
Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content." Social media includes things such as social networking, social book marching, and social cataloguing.
A social network is an online service, or site that focuses on building and reflecting social networks or social relations among people, share interests or activities. A social network site usually consists of each individuals users representation of him or herself; sometimes called a profile, and a variety of additional pages or services. The most popular forms of social media are web based sites that provide ways for users to stay in touch with each other through things like email, and instant messaging. Social networking sites allow users to stay connected and share ideas, thoughts, activities, events, photos, videos and interests with their individual networks.
The most popular form of social networking site over the last few years has been the more "friend" based sites such as Myspace, Facebook, Bebo and Twitter. The main purpose behind these sites is to get or stay connected to your friends through personalized profile pages. The pages and their ease of use can vary greatly from site to site. For example Facebook is quite user friendly as you just type your information into pre-prepared boxes; but the information on every one's page is displayed in nearly identical ways. Facebook page do not allow for very much personalization. On the other hand Myspace allowed for a much more personalized page, including music, background pics and colours as well as thousands of different lay outs; essentially allowing the user to be as creative with their profile page as he or she wanted. Unfortunately in order to personalize your Myspace page you had to be much more HTML comfortable.
The amount of information you give is completely up to you. The things the site will require you to give are a name, (not necessarily your real name, but it will make it much more difficult for friends to find you if you don't provide your true identity.) and an email address. After that you can provide as much or as little information about yourself that you wish. Most social media sites allow you to add a pictures of yourself, age, birthday, city you live in, sex, education and relationship status. But like I said you only have to give as much of that information as you want. Social networking sites are the most popular in the world of social media. These sites allow people to connect with one another based on personal interests, common activities or simply the fact that they are friends in the "real world". On these sites you can post pictures, chat with long lost friends are people sitting right beside you. You can connect with people you haven't seen in ages or find out what your latest celebrity crush is up to today. Interesting Facebook fact: The fastest growing Facebook demographic is those 25 years old or older. I personally have used Myspace, Bebo and Facebook. I used to really like Myspace when people were actually on it. I like being able to personalize my sites with backgrounds and pictures that show who I am and what I am interested in. (I think that is one of the big reasons I use Google Chrome; because I can choose an adorable cupcake them for my tabs!) Bebo wasn't a bad site either. I mainly used it when I lived in Europe to connect with my friends who lived in Ireland who though "Facebook would never last" (Yup my cousin Joanne said this to me and she now has 3 Facebook pages!) I have a Facebook page (Amanda's Facebook). I jumped on the band wagon quite early in the game. In face the first time I tried to sign up; you still had to be affiliated with specific schools. I find Facebook extremely easy to use, but also incredibly annoying. The number of ads on their pages has gone up exponentially over the last few years and I don't know how much influence Mark Zuckerberg actually has any more with the day to day Facebook operations but if you are listening; STOP UPDATING FACEBOOK EVERY OTHER WEEK! My big frustration with Facebook is that every time you get used to a function, they "update" it or tweak it in some unnecessary way.
