Effects of Social Networking

Introduction

Social networks are social structures composed of groups of people, which are connected by one or more types of relationships such as friendship, kinship, common interests and shared knowledge. The origin of social networks goes back at least to 1995, when Randy Conrads created the classmates.com website. This social network is intended for people to regain or maintain contact with former classmates, college, etc (Drushel, Pp. 210-279).

In 2002, the emergence of social networking websites began, which promoted networks of online friend circles. The term is used to describe the relationships in virtual communities, and became popular in 2003 with the advent of sites such as MySpace or Xing. There are over 200 social networking sites, though Facebook has been the one that is most popular among friend circles. The popularity of these sites grew rapidly and large companies have entered the space of social networking. For example, Google launched Orkut on January 22 of 2004. Other search engines such as KaZaZZ! and Yahoo created social networks in 2005 (Kirkpatrick, Pp. 224-384).

In these communities, an initial number of participants send messages to members of their own social network by inviting them to join the site. New participants repeat the process, increasing the total number of members and network links. The sites offer features such as automatic updating of the address book, visible profiles, the ability to create new links with presentation services and other forms of social networking online. Social networks can also be created around business relationships (Wittkower, Pp. 177-288).

Discussion

The use of social networking sites today, is common in all walks of life, like most things, social networking has both positive and negative effects. According to the creator of Facebook , Mark Zuckerberg, the social network was created to stay connected with friends and family. Although, today, the use of Social Networking has become an interesting use for variety, diversification, and has led to different effects (Wittkower, Pp. 177-288).

Use of Social Networks

Social Networks have been a total turn around the way you interact with people. Connect people from different places and beliefs. It also allows using in accordance with the needs of each person. They are used by internationally renowned celebrities who are on Social Networks an excellent means of communicating with his followers and effective advertising system. For politicians, who seek to promote through these and also for students who are in contact with their peers.

The use of social network does not escape the phenomenon of immigration. Social Networks are used by immigrants, who maintain communications with their home country through such websites. By contrast, social media is an effective method of detecting fraud in petitions related to immigration cases by the U.S. Government (Saffer, Pp. 147-186).

The most popular Social Networks

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and MySpace are some of the most popular social networking websites. The most used social networks today do not vary much one from another. These networking websites also feature the use of multiple languages, as in the case of Facebook, which can be used ...