As the development of Internet technology advanced rapidly in the late 1990s, social networking has become prevalent throughout the world. People are dealing with their social work through computers eleven percent of the time (Lecture 10). With the help of the Internet, people no longer feel far away from each other and are experiencing easier ways to access information with each other. Consequently, this gives more advantages to do their social work. Furthermore, as mobile phones have become more powerful in recent years. According to the Intermedia Journal, statistics have shown that social networking is the fastest growing content category among any others in mobile phone (Vladar, Fife). From the year 2009 to 2010, the number of social networking users increased 240 percent, which was two times higher than the second category (Vladar, Fife). This trend illustrates that Social networking has became part of our lives. Nonetheless, as we can see now there are many social networking websites in the Internet. They have their own characteristics and attract millions of fans to create their own profiles.
Among many of these social networking websites, Facebook and Twitter have been dominating the market in recent years. The data from April 2008 has shown that within one month Facebook had 250,000,000 unique visitors, which ranked first (Lecture, 10). Twitter had 80,500,000 unique visitors, ranking third (Lecture, 10). Because of the unique characteristics of the sites, the number of users is increasing dramatically. Facebook created the news feed, which can update people’s current 140 words of less status. People are tired of seeing lengthy sentences and they prefer short ones. Most of the time people would like to know what are their friends doing rather than explaining it in detail. This increases the convenience of using Facebook and attracts more users. Nonetheless, Twitter succeeds in the market because it has many celebrities tweeting. In order to follow those superstars and know more about those famous people’s lives, many people become a user of Twitter too. Both social networking systems are winning the market by its characteristics. Even though we have many benefits in using social networking systems, some severe issues are now being discussed heatedly.
Privacy is the major issue of all because people can access information through the Internet freely. In September 2006, Facebook introduced the “News Feed, many personal information is shown freely online. “Craig Ross believes that more than identity presentation influences the use of Facebook, which are personality, competency & familiarity and other factors” (Ross). Therefore, in order to have more friend with same personality and other factors, people are willing to provide more information to the public. If the bad people take advantage of these opportunities, as a result, it increases the possibility of identity threat, property threat and sexual predators (Lecture, 10).
Overall the social network is doing more good than harm. We should have a “concept-oriented family communication” with the younger generation and help them to avoid privacy issues (Lecture, 10).
Citation
Fife, E., & Vladar,. A.(2010). The growth of mobile social networking in the US. Intermedia, Volume 38.
Mahood, C. Social Networking. Lecture 10, Communication of Technology.
Ross, C. etc. (2009). Personality and motivations associated with Facebook use. Computers in Human Behavior. 25, 578-586.
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