Social Networking

Technologies in social media can be used in many different aspects including impacting the social and business world. It gives us a better way of connecting and communicating with friends, family, and just people around the world in general. Social media can be used as a recruiting tool for companies to hire new employees based on one's experience and qualifications. All of this can be seen through a popular and growing website called LinkedIn. In the article, "Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting," Crawford-Hentz uses LinkedIn to recruit for high quality candidates through a click of a mouse. Professionals can market themselves through this site as a resume alternative including having your work experience, skills, and qualifications all in one profile. On a more serious side of social media, it has been used to fight against dangerous driving in New Delhi, according to the article, "In India, Using Facebook to Catch Scofflaw Drivers." Police in New Delhi are using Facebook to catch traffic violators by having other drivers take photos of videos of the unsuspected drivers and posting it on the Facebook page. These are just some of the ways social media technology can benefit society as a whole. 

Speaking of benefits, social media has a surplus of advantages including its accessibility and connectivity. It is now the core of society today with sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. These sites offer one purpose and that is to connect with anyone around the world while sharing your thoughts online. For businesses, social media is a vital part to a business. It helps create awareness of your brand to the millions of people online browsing through social media and the internet in general. Most companies today have their own Facebook page and it helps in the long run. Although it seems like social media technology can only be advantageous to society, it does have its own cons or a "dark side" to it. Most of it has to do with the privacy of a user because your profile exposes your personal information to millions of other users on the same site, let alone the internet.  Another is cyberbullying. This is the most harmful way social media can be used on any individual including tarnishing one's reputation. An example of a site that condones this is called JuicyCampus. Anonymous users can post attacks on classmates and other students that can be embarrassing, racial, or just false rumors about other people. Sites like these can negatively impact society and its views on social media technology as a whole. 

I think technologies explained above will continue to evolve in the future, if they have not yet already. Since everything is accessed digitally around the internet now, I feel like social media utilized to its full potential. This would help further face to face interactions between friends, family, or just anyone whom you connect on social media. This would retain its purpose which is the connect and interact with different people. 

Citations: 

1) Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting by Frank Langfitt, NPR, March 16, 2008. 

2) "In India, Using Facebook to Catch Scofflaw Drivers" By Heather Timmons, NY Times, August 1, 2010,

3) "They're Back, and They're Bad: Campus-Gossip Web Sites," by Jeffrey R. Young, The Chronicle for Higher Education, Sept 4, 2009, p. A20+