Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Social Net'g

Social networks have revolutionized the way we communicate as well as the way we live. In today's society, practically everything revolves around the internet: specifically social media and social networking. Using Social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn, we are able to communicate with each other from any distance in an instant. We are able to transfer information and data with the click of the finger. Corporations can use social networks to do research on individuals they are interested in hiring and to keep tabs on current employees. Using Social networks, these corporations can learn a tremendous amount of information about an individual by simply conducting a google search on their name and looking through their Facebook profile. While this seems like corporations have the advantage, individuals can benefit greatly from social networks as well. They can share references and have their information they would want others to see, such as their resume. Using a site like LinkedIn would allow them to share their experience and abilities quite easily.

    "Maureen Crawford-Hentz recruits for Osram Sylvania, the global lighting company. She says the new tools               have changed her life.
"Social networking technology is absolutely the best thing to happen to recruiting — ever."
One of Crawford-Hentz's favorite sites is Linkedin, a network of 8 million professionals spread across the world. Linkedin says users include executives from all of the Fortune 500 companies. Typing keywords into a search engine, Crawford can scrape the entire network to dig out high-quality candidates that she can't find elsewhere." (Frank Langfitt)

In this quote from Frank Langfitt's article "Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting", Maureen Crawford-Hentz is an individual who benefited from the use of social networks, specifically LinkedIn. She was able to use the site to find individuals who were perfect fits for her company. The ease of social networking allows her to search through over 8 million people for candidates that fit her criteria. Prior to social networking, this was an impossible task.

While there are many benefits to social media, there is certainly a "dark side". This "dark side" refers to many cons that comes with social networks.  An example of this "dark side" of social networks is that there is no privacy. No one actually has privacy online. Since the internet is connected and everyone has access to it, anything you post can and probably will be accessed by another individual at one point in the future. If you post something on Facebook, it is practically available for anyone to see. No one is safe from this, including the first family of Facebook. According to Rebecca Greenfield's article 
"Facebook Privacy is so Confusing, Even the Zuckerberg Family Photo Isn't Private", Randi Zuckerberg, sister of Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, posted a family photo which was then accessed by random individuals and republished to the web via Twitter. This shows that no one actually has privacy on Facebook, including the Zuckerbergs. This is a perfect of example of the lack of privacy on the internet.

While the internet and social networks are clearly extremely useful and efficient, we lack privacy. The overall benefit is undeniable but it comes at a price of privacy. Even so, the internet and social networks have revolutionized the way of life in today's society and there is a bright future for anyone who can capitalize on this relatively new technology. Social media will continue to play a huge role in society and because of these reasons, I believe that there will be some sort of future development that will help to increase privacy on the internet. By removing privacy, one of the biggest cons of using the internet and social networks, it would allow social media to evolve into a even bigger driving force.



"Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting".  NPR. NPR,  26 November 2006. Web.  13 October 2015.  

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6522523&sc=emaf
"Facebook Privacy is so Confusing, Even the Zuckerberg Family Photo Isn't Private". The Wire. The Wire, 26 December 2012. Web 13 October 2015.  

http://www.thewire.com/technology/2012/12/facebook-privacy-so-confusing-even-zuckerberg-family-photo-isnt-private/60313/


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