3/06/2010

The Benefits of Social Networking Sites

Social networking is one of the hottest new Web technologies in sight with millions of users registering and participating around the globe. Topic-specific Usenet newsgroups available on the Internet and electronic discussion forums characteristically populated by professionals of a like mind have been around in various online formats since the 1980s.
In principle, these earlier technologies and social networking serve the same purpose - to communicate and collaborate. However, social networks, made possible by Web 2.0, are essentially people- rather than topic-centric and one of several next generation communications and collaboration tools that include blogs, wikis and social bookmarking. Social networking services focuses on building online communities of people who share interests or activities, or who interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.

Participants worldwide contribute to and collaborate in readily available online discussions, creating new knowledge bases that are not yet fully recognized as information sources. Social networks typically require registration but are free to join, and significantly, to search for a vast array of reference questions, research projects, and to find experts for all kinds of requirements. The examples of some social networking websites are facebook, flickr, friendster, my space, tagged, hi5 and so on.

There are many pros of using social networking websites. For instant, it provides better ways to keep in touch with our classmates, friends and family. Even though we are far from them, but we can easily connect with them and we can know what they are doing by looking at the status of their profile. Besides, we can also send messages as well as upload photos and videos. Creating a network of contacts goes beyond geographical and cultural differences as we get to know and meet people who share our interests from almost all sides of world. Procuring information on a specific subject is faster and easier as we can ask our network friends to provide us with links to websites that can best provide us with the information that we need or they can straight away provide the information themselves, especially if they are experts of that particular subject or field.

On the other hand, we can use networks of online friends and group memberships to keep in touch with current friends, reconnect with old friends or create real–life friendships through similar interests or groups. Besides establishing important social relationships, social networking members can share their interests with other like–minded members by joining groups and forums. Most social networking websites also offer additional features. In addition to blogs and forums, members can express themselves by designing their profile page to reflect their personality. The most popular extra features include music and video sections. Members can read bios of their favorite music artists from the artist's profile page as well as listen to their favorite songs and watch music videos. The video section can include everything from member–generated videos from hundreds of subjects to TV clips and movie trailers.

Besides that, online business people can use these social services as tools to promote their websites, products and services basically because of the overwhelmingly significant number of people that they have brought together to form communities. Internet marketers cannot be faulted for seeing these sites as good venues to do some aspects of their Internet marketing efforts. Some networking even can help members to find a job or establish business contacts.

Next, social networking sites offer IT job seekers the resources to find peers with similar skills and learn more about employers. A lot of candidates are visit to these sites to learn more about an organization and connecting with people that already work there to get better understanding of the jobs and culture.

There is a type of websites that called online dating sites. While using traditional social networking sites for finding a date can be an option, it is better to go for sites that specialize in online dating in order to eliminate the confusion that can be created in social sites that have users interested in building friendships only and not finding dates. But before getting ourselves a brief orientation of the advantages and disadvantages of online dating, we should know the types of social sites that are available in the Internet today. The first kind of social networking site is classified as traditional social sites or those that have open memberships for people interested to make use of their social networking services. Open memberships are those that allow anyone to join the sites and they come for free.

Specialty networking sites on the other hand, belong to the second type. These sites focus on particular topics or interests such as building love relationships and finding a date online and unlike traditional social networking sites, these sites require membership fees from their users. The advantage of using these online dating sites is that the diversity of choices offered to us. If we have specific standards when it comes to finding a date, then this is the right place for us to find the one that will best suit the standards that we have. The more choices we have the greater chances for us to find a love interest online.

There are always pros and cons in signing up for social networking websites. It very much depends on how we use it and how we think. If we were to use it in a correct way and thinking in a good manner, we'll definitely gain something from it; vice versa, we'll harm others.So, think twice before you action!




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