Facebook and Twitter: Online Social Tools Or a Threat to Society - Essay Example

Facebook and twitter: Online social tools or A Threat to Society Id Lecturer: Due Id: Introduction: Social networks are differentiated not only because they provide a mode of interaction for fun and entertainment purposes, but rather, they facilitate clients to have a social circle that suits them. The social networking sites and software provide a large number of options along with the chat facilities. These options let the user follow, stay updated and interact with the producers and staff of their favorite brand, retailer, designer or any other service or product. This ends up in associations among folks that would not be accomplished, however that is seldom the objective and these gatherings are regularly among "latent ties" (Haythornthwaite, 2005) which shapes up only some offline connection. Visitor are not essentially "associating" always i.e. trying to meet up new people; in fact, they are mainly talking among people who have already are a part of their widespread communal involvement. To accentuate this expressed societal association as a vital systematic characteristic of these places, we tag them "societal network sites." (SNS) The conception of chitchat space broadens additionally to further modus operandi, for example web based discussion service. The same as an exemplar, we can believe the online chitchat service is being presented by web-based client. Once one arrive at the site, it is compulsory to register on. One is able to choose to roll for a description on the site to initiate conversation. One can, in addition, presently sign in like a visitor & plainly type in a moniker to start. Further feature may, in addition, be presented if one signs up for a description, such as right of entry to the round-table. Though, not each and every web based chitchat services have round-table. Advantages and Disadvantages of communicating in public Sphere: Online communication is employed for several reasons. People use it as a medium to connect with far away and distant friends, family and relatives. It makes them feel close to them so they use it on a daily basis or even several times a day. It costs less than telephone or SMS facilities (Boyd & Ellison 2007). People may be stuck at home due to several reasons and may become a victim of boredom. So to kill their boredom, they come online to catch up with their acquaintances or if they are in a thrilling mood, they may start chatting anonymously. They make new friends and gain from their culture and experiences. It makes the world shrink into a global village where anyone can start conversing with someone that shares their common interests. Social Websites and software like Facebook and Twitter are also used officially to communicate and share information. It helps connect remote employees, to interact with experts sitting in head offices or different parts of the globe, to gain expert advice from their expertise and to get access to information easily over the web. Academically, chat sessions are used while delivering lectures or entertaining queries. It is not a compulsion to go for a formal learning experience during chat. One can opt to learn a new language or learn something new about a culture by interacting with the members of that community using social networking web-based tools. As with other things in life, online communication comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. One of the major advantages of online communication is that it bridges the gap in real time. People interact online in real time. The basic concept behind such a communication is to communicate with a person who is available at the other end and will be responding to your queries on instant notice. As compared to the electronic mail medium, that promotes synchronous communication, one is never aware of the availability of the recipient. So online chat basically mimics conversing on a phone absent voice but replaced with textual communication. People tend to communicate via chat when they cannot verbally communicate due to timing issue or event constraint. Also people, who cannot afford to pay for a proper bandwidth, can communicate in a comparatively cheaper and effective way. For newbie, the online chat opens doors to learning new cultures, traditions and aspirations. They interact out of curiosity and increase their knowledge of far off lands, people and their beliefs by communicating with them. It is of great interest to know that people of all age groups tend to find the facts and new information fascinating and very useful. They employ chat as the medium for communication and learning. Social networking tools are also used in online shopping these days to place a query regarding a product that is featured on a website. The consultants are usually online to provide details required and assist clients in making a choice or satisfying them about a product. For instance, the Facebook pages of Nike, Adidas, Gucci, Burberry and many others provide information about their products and range, at times with the prices and order placing procedures. Despite the many advantages on social media communication, there seems to be a harbinger of bad news if these facilities are not properly used. The first drawback of social networking is that it lures people to be who they are not. It thrills them to define a character and personality of their own that they actually lack or never intend to be and show it to some anonymous person they interact virtually with. Basically the level of anonymity provided in the chat software and social networking websites decides to what level people can misuse chatting sessions. It is not uncommon to report fraud, illegal use, abuse and even blackmailing during virtual relationships. Since virtual socialization anonymously encourages people to hide their true identities, people easily fall a victim to such disadvantages. Maturity level of the person using chats is also very Important (Dvorak, Pirillo and Taylor, 2004) Facebook and Twitter: Facebook is certainly the main trendy societal arrangement, & has 55% incursion. One in every seven minutes exhausted online are on Facebook while Three fourths of the time spent on societal connection is on Facebook. Google+ is a speedy increasing societal group, & it is the lone set-up to have mark-up 25 million novel clients in fewer than single month (Kord, 2008). Facebook serves as a medium for connecting socially with a broad network and at the same time it tries to preserve identities. People are so used to using Facebook in their daily lives for connecting that when they feel lonely or wish to catch up with their friends and family, they come online on Facebook or go and read their walls and at times leave messages. They also see videos and pictures to see what their friends and family are up to and it makes them happy to know they are having fun in their lives. One negative trait of such a wall concept is portraying what you are not. People tend to write things on their statuses just to attract attention and seldom care if things are actually that way or not. This misleads one to think about the actual condition of their friends and family and a struggle starts to build up a mechanism and maintain eye catching witty statuses. Fake profiles on Facebook are also one reason one would wish to avoid making friends. People tend to make fake identities just to intrude into someone’s life or gain sensitive information. However, Facebook has provided means for young entrepreneurs to create their own page and market their products online. People are given a chance to do online shopping even for developing nations where online shopping is still not made available because, old but established businessmen prefer tradition ways and are not technologically in touch to get brilliant ideas. One flaw is that the page concept brings in is the possibility of easy misuse by publishing content that might hurt feelings of a sect, defame a personality or hurt the status of a business. Facebook decision of removal of such contents fails to be objective and sometimes the issue gets severe enough that authorities have to ban the site in their countries to protect public from getting hurt. Facebook also offers third party techniques to keep contacts connected like games ranging from sending pokes in the form of notifications to scoring by achieving milestones in an online game. This gives means of staying busy and feel connected at the same moment. One flaw of online social community Facebook is that accounts can be hacked easily and personal information is compromised. Since Facebook allows rich media content upload as well, so usually if an account is hacked, the entire sensitive data of user is at risk. As anticipated, micro blogging has as well expanded in status. Twitter is, evidently, the major fashionable micro blogging spot – in October 2011, it was exercised by a propos of 10% of Internet client globally (Ting, Hong and Wang, 2011). The concept of Twitter is well suited to meet the demands and needs of the fast pace of life we have. People feel connected by updating status or sharing links etc. It does not contain support for multimedia etc as its aim is to make a light weight application on which people can stay connected together by following one another. Privacy is granted by allowing the followed person to select who can follow or not follow them. Another positive aspect of this application is, it limits the count of characters that can be used as a status. So Twitter users can read information they are interested in quickly, as it will not require much time. People share information more, rather than attractive statuses in Twitter. Due to this reason a lot of people follow on Twitter for information exchange purpose that is not usually personal for general public. Celebrities post information about their ventures and fans follow them to get quick updates. The short comings of Twitter include lack of communication mini tools. Only status updates are the medium for communication and tweeting on one another status is the only medium to stay connected. One has to be a staunch follower if they wish to get updated and lack of details might turn out to be frustrating sometimes. It is also a possibility that statuses might be misunderstood or not clearly stated due to limitation in character count. It is of utmost importance that people realize their moral and ethical duties and are mature enough to understand their responsibilities when they opt for a chat session. They should try to build a community of trust and hope for learning and helping others rather than making it a place where people end up being hurt. Online communication mediums have become a widely acceptable technique and are used mostly for better reasons than gossiping. One should work to promote such a culture. References Haythornthwaite, C. (2005). Societal networks & Internet connectivity effects. Information, Communication, & Society, 8 (2), 125-147 Boyd, d. m., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Societal network sites: Definition, history, & scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 11. Kord, J. I. (2008). Understanding the Facebook Generation: A study of the relationship between online social networking and academic and social integration and intentions to re-enroll. ProQuest. Ting, I. H., Hong, T. P., & Wang, L. S. L. (2011). Social Network Mining, Analysis, and Research Trends: Techniques and Applications. Information Science Reference. Dvorak, J., Pirillo, C., & Taylor, W. (2004). Online!: The book. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall/PTR. Read More