What impact do social networking websites have on your lives?

Andra Nanescu, 0727163407 RO80RNCB0723121088860001

1. Introduction
In real life, we dont consider someone coming up to us to tell us what theyve had for breakfast or asking us if we want to be their friend as normal, and yet on some social networking websites that is considered perfectly normal. Thus, in this paper I am going to talk about how social networking websites are influencing our day-today life and what impact they had on how we see the world today. Firstly, I am going to give a general definition of a social network and a social networking service, including their purposes. Secondly, I have chosen three wellknown social networking websites: Facebook, Twitter and Forsquare and I will be discussing the time they were created and by whom, their original purpose, why they are used now and the impact they have on our lives.

2. Social network Vs. social networking service

A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors such as individuals or organizations and the complex set of ties between them. Studying social networks helps with identifying local and global patterns and examining network dynamics. Basically, a social network is consisted of a group of individuals or organizations that share some characteristics such as age, sex, etc. By studying such groups of people, one can determine the trends and ideas that tie a certain group. This is used by magazines or fashion stores in order to find out what their target social group would like to wear. A social networking service is a platform on which to build social networks or social relations between people who share different activities, interests or real-life connection. Usually, a social networking service consists of a representation of which user (a profile) and a variety of additional services. Most social networking services are web-based and allows for users to interact over the internet. This should not be confused with an online community, where users interact with each other through forums, as a social networking service is individual-centered, whereas online communities are group centered. Think of a social networking service as the place for a social network.

3. Three social networking websites that have influenced our lives

The main types of social networking services contain category places, former schools or cities the user has lived in, means to connect with friends and a recommendation system linked through trust.

3.1.

Facebook
Facebook was founded in 2004 in a dorm room at Harvard by Mark Zuckenberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes. Its name stems from the colloquial name of the book given to students at the start of the academic year by some university administrations in the United States. Its predecessor was called FaceMash,

written by Zuckenberg in 2003, while he was a sophomore and it used photos compiled from the online facebooks of nine houses, placing two next to each other, letting users decide the hotter person. This website attracted 450 visitors and 22,00 photo-views in its first four hours of being online. Its creator faced expulsion and was charged by the administration with breach of security, violating copy rights and individual privacy. Facebook was originally created just for Harvard, proceeding to expand to other colleges in the Boston area. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening up to high school students and in 2005, eventually, to anyone aged 13 or over. According to comScore, Facebook is the leading social networking site based on monthly unique visitors, having overtaken his main competitor, MySpace, in April 2008. It has won awards such as placement into the Top 100 Classic Websites by PC Magazine in 2007 and winning the Peoples Voice Award from the Webby Awards in 2008. Now, people use Facebook to announce the biggest milestones in their lives: getting married, having a baby, being in a new relationship. It has become not only a way to share your thoughts with your friends, but a way of contacting your old acquaintances or colleagues.

3.2.

Twitter

Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters which are known as tweets. Tweets are publicly visible by default, but senders can restrict message deliveries to just their followers. Users can tweet via website, SMS or several other applications compatible with most smartphones. Users can subscribe to other users tweets and subscribers are known as followers. In addition, users have the capability to block people who have followed them. Users can group posts together by topic or type or by use of hashtags, words or phrases prefixed with a # sign. Similarly, the @ sign followed by a username is used for mentioning or replying to other users. An RT function also exists, which allows users to repost tweets from other users. A word, phrase or topic that is tagged at a greater rate than other tags is said to be a trending topic. They become popular either through the concerted effort of users or because of an event that promts people to talk about one specific topic. Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and it was launched in July, the same year. It rapidly gained popularity, with over 500 million users registered as of 2012, generating over 340 million tweets by day. Its origins lie in a daylong brainstorming session held by board members of the podcasting company Odeo. The first prototype was used as an internal service for Odeo employees and the full version was introduced publicly on the 15th July 2006. As a social network, Twitter revolves around the principle of followers. If you choose to follow another Twitter user, his posts will appear in reverse chronological order on your main Twitter page. Following 20 people, you will end up seeing a mix of tweets scrolling down the page: breakfast cereal updates, interesting, new links, music recommendations or opinions on very important social issues.

3.3.

Forsquare

Forsquare is a location-based social networking website for mobile devices, such as smartphones. Users check in at venues, using a mobile website, text messaging, or a device-specific application. Location is based on GPS hardware in the mobile phone or network location provided by the application. Each check-in awards the user points and sometimes badges.

The service was created in 2009 by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai. Crowley had previously founded a similar project named Dodgeball as a thesis project, which was bought and shut down by Google, in order to launch Google Latitude. Users are encouraged to be hyper-local and hyper-specific with their check-ins, one can check into a floor/area of a building, or indicate a specific activity while at the venue. Also, they can choose to have their check-ins visible on Facebook, Twitter, or both. Badges are earned if users check-in with specific tags, frequently or with other patterns, such as check-in time. If one person has checked into a venue on more days than anyone else in the past 60 days, and the check-ins are valid under forsquares time and distance protocols, they will be crowned mayor. If another person will check in that venue more often, then they will become the new mayor. Therefore, it is harder to stay mayor after you have become, because it takes checking in frequently. Each time the user checks into a place, he or she receives points. There are more than 100 reasons Foursquare awards points. Some of the most commonly awarded ones are below:

Checking in to a new place 3 points Becoming the Mayor of a venue 5 points Checking in when already the Mayor 3 points Being the first of the user's friends to check into a new location 3 points Checking in to a place the user has been before 1 point Checking in to a new category for the first time - 4 points

Users can check their standing against friends on a leaderboard within the app. The main problem with using Forsquare and linking it to Twitter is the fact that, this way, users can announce via the internet when they are not home, which may be a cause to being robbed. More so, a user will provide his or her exact location, which may attract unwanted visitors. This was the point of a website called Please Rob Me which scraped data from public Twitter messages that had been pushed through Forsquare, to list the people who were not home. As a response to this website, founder Naveen Selvandurai stated that Users decide if they want to push to Twitter and Facebook, over what information they want to share and send. On Forsquare, if you dont want people to know where you are, you dont tell them. You dont check in.

4. Conclusion
I have talked about the general meaning of a social network and a social networking service and I have presented three well known social networking websites: Forsquare, Twitter and Facebook. The good part in using these social networking websites is that you can reconnect with long lost friends or keep in touch with people you cant see anymore. You can meet people from all over the world and interact in ways it wasnt possible until now. However, we must aske ourselves if it is not only right to share this kind of information with people weve barely met, but also if social networking websites are not starting to take completely take over our lives.

Bibliography: Lacy, Sarah (September 12, 2006). "Facebook: Opening the Doors Wider".BusinessWeek (New York). "Why you should beware of Facebook". The Age (Melbourne). New York Times - Bits Blog: "Foursquare Seeks to Turn Nightlife Into a Game" App of the Year: FourSquare". Awards.t3.com www.wikipedia.org