Social Networking Services and Online Counseling

Social Networking Services and Online Counseling

Introduction

The emergence of social networks sites in the last decade has significantly impacted social relations. Through friend lists on MySpace, associations on Face book, and micro blogging on Twitter, social network sites allow people to find, meet, and contact each other more easily (Miller, 2010).

Online counseling has been developing rapidly in recent years. It reflects the technological age in which we live, embracing the opportunities that computerization offers for diversifying and extending modes of communication between client and counselor. It has wide-ranging applications, from asynchronous text-based interaction to live chat, perhaps involving a web-cam, or even virtual representation through a meeting of avatars. There can be a tendency in the technological world to improve and update' continuously, with things moving so fast that we may sometimes fail to fully appreciate the richness and distinctiveness of a particular application, unless we stop and consider it more slowly and in more detail (Nagel and Anthony, 2010).

Discussion

Social Media Network

Social relationships form between two or more people through interactions. It is these complex, and often symbolic, interactions with other people that make us distinctly human (Wartman et al, 2010).

Social Media opened a new dimension of learning and knowledge processes. Students connect with social networking sites for formal and informal leanings. Student connects s with social networking sites for transfer and exchange of knowledge. This extends to the people that our friends and relatives know as well. Sociocentric networks aim to depict the relationships among members of an entire group.

A social network service is a social media that focus on finding people to interact online. They consist of people who share some relationship, mostly friendship, maintain common interests and activities, or are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Social networks include the people we know professionally-through work, school, and volunteerism. Social Network Services is a Web based services or platform that focuses on creating and reflecting social network (Miller, 2010).

Face book is by far the most popular social networking site, reporting at least 400 million users worldwide, with more than 200 million users logging on once a day as of 2010. Although there is nothing particularly activist about popular social networks sites such as Face book and MySpace, social movements have been enthusiastic about adopting this easy and economical tool for organizing, especially for global activism (Wartman et al, 2010).

Blogging is becoming more popular than setting up Websites because some providers offer bloggers maintenance of personal blogs free of charge In addition to conventional blogs, special blog types like video blogs and micro blogs are also gaining in popularity. The latter is made up of short messages and can be fed in and read not only by using computers with Internet access but also via mobile devices like cellular phones or personal digital assistants. Twitter is popular in micro blogging service that enable its users send and read text based posts is known as tweets (Miller, 2010).

Social network services are beneficial for us ...