Social Networking

Today, a professor of mine was asking the class, "Does anyone remember the times when the internet was not so vastly used?" Practically only five people out of a group of fifty raised their hands, including me. I was just shocked to see that no one could remember when internet, Google and Facebook were not so popular or just did not exist. New media such as Google and Yahoo search engines and now social media such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc has really revolutionized the world. Especially social media has changed the way we communicate with people and now its so much easier to communicate with someone that is across the world from you.

Social Networks have changed the way we interact with each other and "behave" around each other. People who are on Facebook and Twitter don't only view their friends but they also have access to company pages, artists pages, corporate pages and etc. Recently, employers are also filtering possible candidates for job openings through LinkedIn and searching applicants through Facebook. According to an article by Frank Langfitt called 'Social Networkinng Technology Boosts Job Recruiting", Langfitt mentions how more and more employers are looking into LinkedIn to find eligible candidates. LinkedIn is a social networking website for those who are interested in building their careers. You can put many different attributes on the page, such as what type of job you are looking for, where you got your education from, and what are your qualifications and skills. Linkedin reminds me of an extended resume and just like Langfitt, I believe its a great way for recruiters to look for candidates externally rather than internally. The "dark side" to this is that its a social networking site; if an employer or recruiter reads on someones page that they belong to such an such company,it doesnt mean that it is generally true. Thus, a lack of privacy or honestly lacks in all types of social networking websites.

Facebook is one of the leading social media websites. Its "what are you doing now" status update section is always a favorite of mine because you can write practically anything there. And people usually write all sorts of things there. And now with internet on the phone, we could practically be anywhere around the world updating our Facebook. Virginia Hefferman of the New York Times wrote an article "Being There" about status updates. Just like her sometimes I have difficulty with my status update, because no one wants to really know what exactly I am doing at that point because most likely I am just updating my Facebook. So Ms. Hefferman suggests that the best status is one that is a question,

Whats interesting about facebook is that it changed social networking so vastly. Starting from the Profile status update to the privacy settings, to the advertisements, Facebook is definitely changing around how our future internet world will be like.