The Social Networks Boom and its Influence - Research Paper Example

The Social Networks Boom and its Influence A social network is defined as a collection of social actors, called nodes, which are members connected byone or more types of relations (Furht 4). A social network site my be described as a web-based service which provides individuals the ability to create their own profile which is governed by a set of rules or policies. These individual profiles may display a list of other users that share a connection with a specific user. In turn, these connections may be viewed and explored by members based on limits set by the profile owner (Boyd and Ellison 211). The first social networking sites, Classmates.com and SixDegrees.com, appeared in 1995 and 1997, respectively. Classmates.com was founded by Randy Conrads with the aim of providing people a method of getting in touch with former classmates and friends from kindergarten to college (Leung). SixDegrees.com on the other hand, was advertised as a tool to bridge connections with users. Despite having more than a million members, the site ceased operations in 2000 due to sustainability issues (Boyd and Ellison 214). The start of the 21st century ushered in an influx of social networking services. Jonathan Abrams created Friendster.com in 2002 to compete with Match.com, a dating site. Its initial success was cut short when Abrams rejected Google.com’s $30 million offer. In 2003, MySpace.com was developed by several employees of Intermix Media and soon dominated over Frienster.com. In 2005, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation bought MySpace.com and its parent company for $580 million. Another leading social networking site, Facebook.com had its humble beginnings at Harvard University. Mark Zuckerberg, a sophomore student, created Facemash which eventually evolved to “The Facebook”, a site exclusive for Harvard students. Its growing membership soon included Ivy League students and from other educational institutions. In 2006, anyone with an email address can be a member. In 2009, Facebook became the most popular social networking site (Zarella 55). Today, social networking is more than just creating user profiles, connecting with other individuals, and sending messages. Twitter.com allows members to post 140-character messages called tweets. Tweets serve a micro-blogs, which may contain information on a user’s current activities or thoughts which they intend to share over the internet. Members usually access the service through mobile phones and computers (Kelsey 181-182). YouTube.com started out as a video-sharing service which allows users to upload, watch and share video clips with the rest of the world. In 2006 it was bought by Google.com for $1.65 billion worth of stock. Despite its popularity, YouTube.com has been criticized for its failure to comply with the provisions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (Fellow 383-384). LinkedIn is a social network designed for professional and business purposes. Members utilize the site to find work and recruit people for jobs. It allows users to meet people from various industries, connect with past and present colleagues, and organize interest groups (Kelsey 331). Sethi and Adhikari identified four advantages of utilizing social networking. First, the basic human need to socialize with a diverse group of individuals. This allows individuals to meet different kinds of people from different places and cultures while at the same time provide a connection with groups that share the same ideals or interests. Social networking promotes unity within a group and internal and external diversity. Second, the basic human need to share their thoughts, knowledge and skills enable individuals to disseminate information which could be beneficial to other users. Individuals are provided a way to pool resources in terms of knowledge and skills for numerous applications. Third, social networking has the capacity to change an individual’s concept of identity. An individual usually chooses a group which would reflect a part of his personality. Once an individual joins a particular group, he becomes identified with it and becomes part of who he is. Fourth, the viral nature of social networking does not require a lot of effort. In the internet, ideas can spread like wildfire and important information can be disseminated in just a matter of days, if not hours (9). On the other hand, the use of social networking does have its disadvantages. First, there are situations wherein the time spent in social networking activities outweigh the benefits derived from it. Therefore, social networking may pose some issues pertaining to efficiency. Second, despite its potential for knowledge dissemination and skills enhancement in business settings, social networking has also been developed for entertainment and leisure, thus reducing productivity in the workplace. Third, the marketing potential of social networking is gradually being tapped my marketing firms and has become fair game for most companies. Moreover, commercialism is slowly encroaching on the networks’ social nature. Fourth, members of social networking sites are prone to episodes of boredom and stress. When individuals are constantly immersed in a specialized level of social interaction (e.g. professional or business networking), the monotony takes away the user’s interest in the site. In these cases, exposure to different levels of interaction may help alleviate the situation, such as interest groups which may cater to an individual’s other interests (Sethi and Adhikari 9). Social networking has come a long way from its humble beginnings and has increasingly manifested its influence in everyday life. What started out as a means of connecting and interacting with other people in an interpersonal level has developed into something that permeates the very fabric of human society. On a personal and interpersonal level, social networking has revolutionized sensing and envisioning among a group of people (Denning and Dunham 349). It only takes a few minutes to alert hundreds or even thousands of people about issues, no matter how trivial or how critical the topic could be. For example, a decade or so earlier, if a student is having problems about a lesson in school, this student personally asks a classmate or a parent, calls his tutor or requests a teacher for an academic consulting. In the social networking age, all the student needs to do is post a message on Facebook and in a few minutes, links to helpful Websites and tutorials appear as comments on the posts. More often than not, responses from the Facebook post are very helpful. There are, of course, positive and negative effects of the above-mentioned influence of the social network boom. On the positive side, problems seem to get easily resolved. The downside, however, is that the human need for belongingness as outlined in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is artificially fulfilled (Milliken and Honeycutt 73). This could bring some serious repercussions on the behavior of people who had to replace their basic social need with automated counterparts. On an economic standpoint, social networking has proven to be effective in floating trial offers, and sustaining the market presence of products (Denning and Dunham 349). Tweets from celebrities unofficially endorsing good products and advertisements posted on Facebook tend to obtain better results than from other forms of media (Drencheva para. 3, Williamson para. 1). This should not, however come as a surprise because there Facebook has more than 500 million subscribers, while Twitter has over 100 million registered users (Facebook para. 1, Bosker para. 3). The political arena has also benefited much from the social networks boom in the form of a new and popular forum to announce campaign platforms and convince voters that they are the man for the job (“Using Twitter in a Political Campaign” para. 1, Bode 1). Politicians are able to reach more voters during the campaign not through newspaper, TV or radio ads, but by harnessing the power of technology. In this regard, it may be safely generalized that after all has been said and done, the great issues of the day can not be resolved by blood and guts, but with the use of social networking networks. It did work for President Obama’s campaign, and with the rate at which technology advances, social networks will continue to wield its influence in political campaigns and even in non-political advocacies. Finally, the scientific and educational community have found ways to harness the potential of social networks. Denning and Dunham acknowledged social networks as a venue for broader adoption of crucial products and practices. Particularly, Google is believed to be explicitly promoting inventors and their inventions using social networks (349). Social networks also exudes positive influence on education. A study conducted at the University of Minnesota revealed that “students using social networking sites are actually practicing the kinds of 21st century skills we want them to develop to be successful today” (para. 4). On the whole, social networks tend to influence various sectors because they offer a multiplicity of opportunities to practice effective coordination. In this sense, Denning and Dunham described the ultimate function of social networks in the following statement: “the network functions like a mirror that shows someone whether their reputation is positive or negative. It is easy to ask and received help. Networks are particularly good at encouraging collaboration – the connection and solidarity is already there” (349). Positive or negative, the influence of social networks are grounded on one of man’s inherent social needs – love and belonging, which is more of psychological than physical. This influence is propagated by the influx of technology which tends to shrink physical distance to sustain connectivity among a group. After all, no man is an island. Works Cited Bode, Leticia. "Facebook Reception: Examining User Generated Political Ads Online" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the APSA 2008 Annual Meeting, Hynes Convention Center, Boston, Massachusetts, Aug 28, 2008. Bosker, Bianca. “Twitter User Statistics Revealed.” huffingtonpost.com. The Huffington Post, 30 April 2010. Web. 30 Nov. 2010. Boyd, Danah and Ellison, Nicole. “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13.1 (2007): 210-230. Print. Denning, Peter, and Robert Dunham. The Innovator’s Way: Essential Practices for Successful Innovation. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2010. Print. Drencheva, Andreana Addy. “Advertisements on Twitter? Does it Make a Difference?” thenextgreatgeneration.com. GenY/Millennials, 21 April 2010. Web. 30 Nov. 2010. Facebook Press Room. “Statistics.” facebook.com. Facebook, 2010. Web. 30 Nov. 2010. Fellow, Anthony. American Media History. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2010. Print. Furht, Borko. Handbook of Social Network Technologies and Applications. New York: Springer, 2010. Print. Kelsey, Todd. Social Networking Spaces: From Facebook to Twitter to Everything In Between. New York: Springer, 2010. Print. Leung, Rebecca. “In Search of the Past”. CBS.com. Web. 29 Nov. 2010. Milliken, Elizabeth, and Alyson Honeycutt. Understanding Human Behavior: A Guide for Health Care Providers. New York: Delmar Learning, 2004. Print. Sethi, Anjanee and Adhikari, Bhavana. Business Communication. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill, 2010. Print. “Using Twitter in a Political Campaign.” victorystore.com. Wordpress, 7 June 2009. Web. 30 Nov. 2010. Williamson, Debra. “Facebook’s Surprise.” technologyreview.com. MIT, 19 Oct. 2010. Web. 30 Nov. 2010. Zarella, Dan. The Social Media Marketing Book. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 2010. Print. Read More