Social Networking

One of many social benefits of online networking technologies were presented to us during this presidential campaign when Barack Obama used social media such us Facebook, Youtube as a mean to communicate its ideas with wide range of internet users, especially the younger generation of Americans. In New York Times article, David Carr summarizes the effects of social networking used in Obama’s campaign in the following words, “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.”

Another example of using social media technologies in politics is tweetering. For example, in Iran during the elections young people used the tweeter.com to communicate with the rest of the world to show their disapproval of the outcome of the elections.

Businesses use blogs, facebook and any other possible social media to advertise, promote their services and products.

Networking technologies are more often used by the employers as a help in hiring people. According to Frank Lengfitt and his article Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting, “Professional recruiters have started hunting for job candidates using social networking technology.” Creating the right profile including interests, achievements, education and professional ideas can lead to being noticed by the future employer.

As with everything else, there is a good and bad side of everything. We benefit from social networking in a big scale, but at the same time we give up some rights. As soon as we post a picture or upload a video on Facebook it becomes the property of Facebook. It happens very often that social sites enable profile pictures to advertisers and marketers, without an announcement to users.

The actual lack of control over your personal content can bring some serious issues. However, we have to remember that with every newly developed technology there are people who will use it not in the way it was initially designed for but for the personal gain.

I believe the social networking sites will keep attracting more and more people of different age. I also believe that gradually people will start to realize that for the benefits of having hundreds of “friends” they will have to give up some personal rights such as right to their online content and most importantly the right to privacy.