Social Networking

Social Networking has certainly invited new opportunities and possibilities of use. Many social networking services such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Blog sites have brought upon several new benefits and some issues of concern as well. On the corporate side of the social networking, businesses are capable of obtaining more personal feedback of their products or services, which can serve as vital information for making improvements. A possible downside to community reviews is the validity of such feedback. In Technology Review, researchers say online recommendation systems can be distorted by a minority of users. The mass feedback can be a false representation of criticism if a large number of feedback comes from a small amount of users. In addition, the small representation that votes may be on the extreme end of the spectrum. User feedback can evolve into even more in-depth reviews that show their usage of the product and service.

Businesses are also able to use social networking technology to help with job recruiting. According to the NPR, professional recruiters have begun using MySpace, Facebook, and particularly LinkedIn to locate qualifying candidates for hire. This has resulted in an increase in job recruitment. It is quite possible that in the future, employers may conduct interviews online instead of using phone calls or meeting physically in person.

Social Networking sites also allow for several ways to share content including videos, images, and more. Barb Dybwad of Mashable mentions several ways to utilize twitter other than it's primary status update based function. The expansion of functions for social networking sites allow users to have more options available to them.

The goal of these sites is to get the user to speak out and be more open about their life and opinions. This of course is not what everyone may want since privacy is to be respected as well. Marc Parry of The Chronicle states that research indicates Facebook users have altered their privacy at least once in the history of their account. Social networking will certainly still expand by leaps and bounds but at the same time, the services need to realize there is a limit to how much people are willing to share and there should be control over that.

Social Networking is not to be taken for granted and it will not escape our lives especially with the incorporation of wireless devices.