Social Networking Sites

Social Media Sites can be relatively similar in how they function and how they want to appeal to you; through connecting you with other people who relatively have the same interest as you. Some major sites that people currently use are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit. Because Instagram is owned by Facebook, it is relatively similar. Signing up for Facebook allows you to use your Facebook account to connect to Instagram and to connect with people on Instagram that are your Facebook friends. Both websites show suggested post of what they think you like the most or based on what you have viewed recently and or most frequently. While Instagram may be more casual for videos, pictures, and personal life updates, Facebook can be a little more extreme, containing games for people to play, more political discussion, and more posts on people's thoughts about anything really.

Twitter from my perspective looks very organized. Everything is just from top to bottom with no extra links or fluff taking up the extra space the website page has. You can choose who to follow to be able to see what they post and what they like. You can also "retweet" what someone says, which is basically sharing what the person said to spread their message. Although it does not look as interactive as Facebook does, it does a good job of being very simplistic and very easy to use.

Reddit is the odd-one out from all of them. Reddit is a social media platform that does not allow you to connect directly with your friends one on one but rather, is a compilation of threads of different topics that people can choose to participate in discussion about. So rather than having friends to connect to and seeing only what they post and or what they share, you can filter our what you want to see by subscribing to different forums available to see their top post and the discussion taking place about it. Making an account is also very simple, as it just requires an E-Mail and Password.

Blog Social Networking

When we hear "Social Networking", the first thing that comes up in most of our minds is the social website and app Facebook. Facebook was created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and has only developed and continued to grow from then on. In 2013, Facebook introduced the "Graph Search", which allows the individual to filter out what they want to look up and what their friends also want to see. In addition to this, it is possible to do the reverse, where you can also find people who have the same general interest as you through this "Graph Search" engine. Although its intentions are to enable the user to filter out what they want to and don't want to see, it probably hasn't and won't be used for this specific instruction only. By allowing the individual to filter out they want to see, it allows potential employers to look up who they are hiring to see their entire lifestyle and their tenancies which may ultimately influence the hiring decision. This also means that not everyone's information is private and secure, as anyone can find you and about who you are.
On the other hand, something like the "Graph Search" can be used to tailor to an individual's professional needs by building their profile up and to outreach to potential employers for an opportunity to work for them. For example, a website like Linkedin allows the user to upload their resume for employers to look at. While this does not necessarily protect your privacy, at a cost, it allows employers to look at who you are from a professional stand point and encourage you to apply for certain job openings.
Through websites like Facebook and Linkedin, people no longer have to actively scout our people to fill missing positions in their companies. They can now however, just go to one of these websites and look for people or just ask their current employees if they know someone who can do the job. Like Frank Langfitt said, "With social networking, I don't need to go to Bob directly to find out who Bob's friends are. Or Bob's friends' friends. So, effectively, I have a thousand contacts that could potentially lead me to 100,000, now I have 8,500 contacts that could potentially lead me to 4.5 million."

In the future, we may see social media may be used as a way to collect information about people in exchange of keeping contact with other people or building up a network or just as a necessity of everyday life that we cannot function without. Because it has been so ingrained into our minds that facebook, twitter, snapchat, linkedin, etc are a must in today's society, it can be considered a necessity to grow as an adult and to progress one's career or even social opportunities. 

https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-xpm-2013-01-15-chi-facebook-01152013-story.html
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6522523&sc=emaf?storyId=6522523&sc=emaf
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/fashion/02BEST.html

Blogs Vs. Wikis

Wiki.Org defines wiki as "the simplest online database that could work" (InformationWeek). Usually, when we see a "wiki", the first thing that comes to most of our minds is Wikipedia.com, where many of us go to when we have little to no knowledge of a topic or may be just finding ourselves wanting to know more about a topic. Wikipedia.com can also be seen as an online encyclopedia that is written by anyone and maintained by anyone. Although this may pose a risk as to if information is correct or not, Wikipedia has successfully cut the cost of publishing and sharing information (InformationWeek). Some of us however, have never considered owning or running a Wikipedia page. We may think that it may be too much work, too tedious, or just not worth investing into. However, when working in a team, running a Wikipedia page for informational and or business purposes may not be so bad after all. Cio.com writes that to maintain a Wikipedia page, delegate an individual to run and manage the page. To create the outline of the Wikipedia page, run an outline with a team. What goes on the Wikipedia may grow and may be used for future business purposes. Creatively, Wiki's could be used as an online forum like Reddit, where there can be real-time discussion while also having the ability to cite your sources and or reason with other people with the availability of other Wikipedia pages.

Blogs on the other hand, can be seen as allowing anyone to become a reporter and publisher of News and their opinions for free (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN2I1pWXjXI). Because it allowed people to do this online, it also allowed to Blogger, the person who writes the Blog, to choose what they want to talk about and what audience they want to target. Blogs foster communities by allowing readers to comment on postings, which allow the reader to not only become an author themselves, but also allowing them to interact with the blogger (Kathy E. Gill). In addition, because blogs may foster a community of any size, it can empower people to move from the observer status that they have been to someone who actually asks questions and talks about what is happening. This causes the reporters who ask questions to be questioned. (Kathy E. Gill). Blogs can also be used for collaborations of different sorts; whether it may be used to promote an event between two people or entities or just a group of people working together on one blog. Usually when Blogs are collaborating with someone or something else, the goal is to promote themselves and or promote the other person or being.

Sources"How to Use Wikis for Business," by Ezra Goodnoe, Information Week, August 8, 2005, http://www.informationweek.com/news/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=167600331

Wiki While You Work; The technology popularized by Wikipedia can help companies gather and manage their own collective knowledge. Here's how to get started by Margaret Locher. CIO, May 1, 2008. Vol. 21, Iss. 14. Available at: http://www.cio.com/article/336818/More_on_How_to_Build_Your_Own_Wikipedia

How Can We Measure the Influence of the Blogosphere? by Kathy E. Gill. Workshop on the Weblogging Ecosystem, May 2004. available from:http://faculty.washington.edu/kegill/pub/www2004_blogosphere_gill.pdf

The Social and Political Influences on Social Media

For my term paper, I decided to write on the Social and Political Influences on Social Media. Currently, Social Media has not been something that is optional in many people's lives. Rather, it has been ingrained as part of one's everyday routine and lifestyle. In the Social aspect of social media, people can reach out to one another, keep updated with one another, and overall just be more informed about what is going on throughout their neighborhood and even their city. In the Political aspect of social media, it allows the individual to keep up with current politics, current news that are important and may affect our lives, and how we as a society are functioning alongside with other. However, both of these influences have downsides. Socially, individuals become so attached to social media that their lives rotate around social media platforms and impressing others through it. Politically, it can politically sway an individual's political opinion and what is being shown to push political agendas. Through this term paper, I would like to explore the positives and negatives of these influences and how they affect not only social media, but our lives as well.