Social Networking Sites

Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, LinkedIn.


Listed above are four sites that have been an integral part of the growth of social networking. From my observations I describe each as follows:


Myspace
- Catalyst of Facebook and most other social networking sites
- Younger audience
- Allows customization of personal page
- Ability to add music on page
- Ability to have a blog portion to page


Facebook
- Originally intended use only for college students
- Perceived as more sophisticated version of Myspace
- Uniform, non-customization of personal page
- Older audience
- Ability to categorize friends


Twitter
- Less cluttered
- More focused on communication
- 140 Character limit provides an easily legible status update
- Celebrities tend to use Twitter to update their daily activities over Facebook or Myspace
- Businesses use Twitter to directly communicate to customers


LinkedIn
- Used highly by corporations as hiring tool
- Majority of users are industry professionals
- Profiles are set up as Resumes for users
- No photo albums 
- Distinguished from other social networking sites instead as "professional networking"


As we can see, they mostly all serve a different audience/target. I don't see one taking over the other as they each have their own competitive advantages.

Twitter

Twitter, BlackBoard, or In-Class? Which discussion route would you prefer?

Well, the way that communication has evolved these days, I would argue that in a general sense, the method that is most instant and accessible will favor the majority of votes. So which is that? Definitely, Twitter.

Why not Blackboard? Well, let's walk through the login process. First you have to go on to www.cuny.edu and then click on the "Portal Login" option, and then the "BlackBoard 8 Direct" option, and then we have to type in a username and password, EVERYTIME.  Not to mention, the only access to BlackBoard is through logging on from a physical computer. Now as I mentioned above, communication has evolved into  forms that are accessible and instant. This login procedure and inability to access it through mobility deters many users from deeming it as an acceptable mode of communication.

What about physical, in-class discussions? While this means of communication may be the most effective and instant, the process of getting a group of individuals in the same room at the same time is the biggest challenge. Not to mention that many people nowadays truly fear the thought of public speaking. I believe this is due in part mostly to the fact that mobile communication has become such a major part of our daily lives.

People now have the option to communicate with each other no matter their location and also be able to have record of such conversation by simply applying a unique trending topic "#" symbol on Twitter. This instant and accessible form of communication has attracted hundreds of millions of users and will only grow as people find more uses for it (i.e. This Class!)

Social Networking

I believe that two of the most powerful leverages that social networking has within society today is recruitment and marketing.  Personally, I can attest to the power of recruitment through social networking because without it, I would of not been employed with the company that I am currently with.  It was through LinkedIn that the recruiter was able to find me and reach out to me asking if I was interested in an opening they had. Shally Steckerl in Frank Langfitt's article, Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting, puts into perspective how recruitment opportunities have evolved through our time with this explanation - "With my Rolodex, I had to call any one of these thousand people and say, 'Hey, Bob. I'm looking for someone that does this, or I'm looking for someone in this industry, or I'm looking for a job, who do you know? 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." Job seekers now have extra leverage by posting their resume on a social networking site like LinkedIn, it increases the exposure of their talent and aids in the hiring process. Before any of this existed, applicants had to actively send out and contact a multitude of people to even be considered. Now there are an abundance of channels for both parties to go through. 

On the marketing aspect, Twitter as described in Claire Cain Miller's article, Facebook is Going for Some Twitter Sensibility, is "a tool for people to peer into the collective mind and see what people are talking about in real time. It is also a tool for businesses to reach customers and monitor what their customers are saying about them." This evolution in social communication between a business and its consumers is a breakthrough in marketing. Now more than ever, businesses are able to directly speak to their core customers and evaluate all types of feedback at the same time. This opens up a tremendous amount of opportunities in the researching of improvement aspects to any company; information that years ago would've cost a fortune to obtain.

On the contrary, there are obviously some negative results of all this change for businesses. Take for example, that a group of individuals had a bad experience somehow with your brand. This could go viral and within hours or days can spread from just one group, to thousands or millions of people. As a business you have to prepare to attack and remedy any situation like this that may potentially tarnish your brand.

From this, these social networking sites essentially provides the consumers with more buying power. In the future, from this instant form of communication and growing network of social media users, I wouldn't be surprised if marketing strategies within bigger corporations are to be primarily determined by the voices of the main influencers of the brand.

Blogs Vs. Wikis

Blogs and Wikis both allow us the ability to convey our thoughts on the Internet. What used to be personal journals or autobiographies are now blogs and wikis containing the same information.  Privacy and secrecy is now an option. You elect to dismiss yourself of this option once you decide to post on the Internet for the world to see.

The main difference I would consider between blogs and wikis is the level of control on the content produced. Blogs are personal and therefore allow you to actually be the author of the work and you have censorship on what you want submitted. Wikis on the other hand is more so used for collaborative works allowing multiple individuals to contribute to the content being produced.

This issue of control has led to much debate on both blogs and wikis though. As Maureen Dowd mentioned in Stung by the Perfect Sting, "...the Internet is different than water-cooler gossip. It’s there for the whole world to see..." This has shaped the world of business and social life in a whole different form. In business, blogs are now able to judge and critic your brand without your company having one say in censorship. Their opinions if used in a collaborative effort can make or break your company or in an extreme case an individuals life as we have seen in the case that Maureen Dowd described of "Megan Meier, the 13-year-old who killed herself after getting cyber bullied by the mother of a classmate who pretended to be a teen suitor named 'Josh.'" With wikis, control has increasingly lessened for the contributors. According to John D. Sutter's article, Wikipedia: No longer the Wild West?, due to high concerns of falsely identifying individuals, wikis have placed restrictions on the feasibility of editing content by "assigning editors to some of its entries. These trusted volunteers likely would have to approve public edits before they're published to English-language stories about living people."

With this said, convergence is the essence of today's networked world. As previously mentioned, communication is instant. Somebody could blog about a major event in the matter of minutes via his/her wireless smart phone. This dominoes into the way we communicate through every aspect of life. It even seems today, that if your business does not have a presence on the Internet or involve itself in any social media initiative, you are practically irrelevant.

Let's take a look into the future: a "photoshop wiki" in the making. This wiki allows people to post up photos that need to be edited, with instructions on what they want done. Individuals can now take the photo, edit it and then post back to share.

The Twitter Life.

Twitter.

Seems simple enough. Within a mere 140 characters, you have to tell the world your thoughts, dreams, locations, activities, or life problems. Well over 80 million users already and still rapidly growing, there are more and more people learning the ways of tweeting. So, what does this mean? To my knowledge, they pay the top Marketers in the world to do exactly this - Convey a message to get the attention of as many people as possible. Does this mean that we will inevitably become marketers ourselves without even knowing it?

Through my future analysis I will dive into exactly how Twitter has impacted the way the world interacts socially, economically, technologically, and politically. Twitter has now opened up a whole new method in the ways people are able to market and interact with each other.

Bringing the world a little closer together through only 140 characters...