Social Networking

Social Networking

• Twitter

Twitter is a social networking service which allows people to send and read short messages to each other and these are called ‘tweets.’ People who register with Twitter can read and post tweets and access the site through the website interface, SMS(short message service), or a mobile device. Unregistered people can only read messages and so cannot add their own input.

Twitter was designed in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass and by July 2006 the site was launched. The service gained great popularity and in 2013 Twitter was one of the most visited websites and as of July 2014 Twitter has more than 500 million users and 271 million are active. 

• Facebook

Facebook is another social networking service which was launched in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerburg, with his Harvard University roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughs.  At first it was solely for Harvard University students but very soon start to expand.

You have to register to use the site and you create your own profile and add other users as ‘friends’. This enables both parties to exchange messages, post status updates, upload photos and videos and receive notifications when others update their profile. Facebook now allows anyone who claims to be 13 to use the site and in June 2014 it had 1.3 billion active users. Facebook has faced much scrutiny and criticism about their privacy policies because they hold so much data on all of their followers.

• A Blog

A Blog is a discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web and is displayed in reverse chronological order. Until 2009 it was usually the work of a single person on a single subject but as time went on it has become used by ‘multi-author blogs (MABS) from the media, newspapers, universities, think tanks and advocacy groups.

A blog has become another social networking service as bloggers produce content to post on their blogs and build social relations their readers and other bloggers. Many bloggers can concentrate on a specific subject where others use it as an online diary and many education systems use blogging for instructions and contact, these are called edublogs.                                     

• Skype

Skype was released in August 2003 and was created by Dane Janus Frijs and Swede Niklas Zennstrom but has changed hands through eBay and various businesses for very large amounts of money and ending up with Microsoft in May 2011 for $8.5 billion.

Skype is telecommunications software that provides video chat and voice calls through our computers, tablets and mobile devices via the internet. It is the most popular VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) as you receive free PC-PC calling and very low rates for PC calling all around the world with no contracts, no commitments, and no gimmicks service.

Personally I have always used Facebook as my friends from school and college have always used it and after years of using Facebook I feel very comfortable with it. When I went to Tring Park School for the Performing Arts at the age of 16 I felt terribly alone and if it was not for Facebook I think it would have been much harder for me as I would have lost touch with my friends from home. Having Facebook on our ipads, phones and laptop nowadays gave me the option to keep in touch with friends and family whenever I wanted to throughout the day which meant a big deal to me back then. Now I’m Facebook friends with both school and college friends as they are scattered all over the world from Japan to Ireland. Now one of my school friends is working in Dubai and as well as Facebooking her I also Skype her which means we can sit and talk face to face for hours and it is just so easy. I sometimes feel she is never away as we are always updated on gossip or work situations all the time.