1.What are social networks?
•Psychology defined social networks as a social structure made up of individuals which are connected by relationships or interdependency such as: likes, dislikes, hobbies, financial exchange, knowledge, believes, etc..
•The online social networks on the internet have the same concept as this in psychology with a little difference that is; online social network is connection between people world wide reflects social relationships among people who share interests or activities.
•These online social networks consist of a representation of each user which called the "profile". They provide means for users to interact over the internet by e-mail or messaging. They also allow users to share ideas, activities, events, photos, videos, news within their individual networks.
•The main types of social network services are those which contain category places (school year or classmates) to connect with friends.
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2.History of social networks:
The series of generation and developing of social networks:
•Early social networking on the World Wide Web began by:
-Generation of online communities focused on bringing people together to interact with each other through chat rooms and encouraged users to share personal information and ideas via personal web pages.
-Then allowing people links to each other by e-mail addresses.
-User profiles can compile lists of friends and searching for other users with similar interests.
-Theses features for finding and managing friends have been developed.
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3.importance of social networks:
a)Personal uses:
•Majority of people using online social networks to keep in touch with friends whatever they are near or hundred of miles away.
•People can share, update, like and comment on statuses, photos, videos and news and discuss every thing together and keep up to date with what all is doing.
•It is a fast and inexpensive way to freely share every thing instead of making an expensive phone call or sending a letter.
b)Business uses:
-Connecting with customers:
•Companies can conduct themselves by speaking directly to the customers using these social networking sites.
•On these sites customers can complain about the service they provide and make their own suggestions which can be useful to the company in the future.
•The company online response is a simple apology about the problem that the customer faced.
•So those companies can evaluate the service and increase their reputation, therefore customers and potential customers will feel much more comfortable coming back.
-marketing:
•Online social networks are the opportunity for business types to expand their business inexpensively.
•Companies can advertise, sell, and make public relations, direct marketing and sales promotion on these sites.
•Social media marketing usually centre on efforts to create content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share it with their social networks.
•A corporate message spreads from user to user and resonates as it coming from a trusted brand.
c)Entertainment uses:
•Many famous artists have been discovered through social networks.
•Also videos and songs can be shared through those sites.
•Some users can play games on those sites alone or with other users in some kind of tournament to spend a nice time in a funny and entertaining stuff.
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4.Disadvantages of social networks:
-Privacy:
•Data theft and viruses have been grown among users by giving out too much personal information.
•We have two different issues which are: security issues and privacy issues.
•While security issues occur when a hacker gains unauthorized access to a site's protected coding or written language.
•But privacy issues involving the unwarranted access to a private information of you, for example when someone watching you type your password, or by having a lot of friends and groups memberships without controlling the information of you they can watch or take that is more likely to be harmed as long as people can know who you exactly are then some can find ways to do you in.
-Risk for child safety:
•Using social networks, chat rooms, e-mail and messaging can put children at a potential risk of encountering online predators.
•Kids feel they are aware of the dangers of predators but in reality they are quite naive about online relationship.
-Psychological effects:
•People spend an excess amount of time on social networking sites and on the internet in general.
•As a result of that there is a clinical disorder called "internet addiction" which cause:
-Time consuming especially if this isn't your kind of thing, then it would be just a waste of time for you.
-And it also can affect the extent to which a person feels lonely and causing a destruction of social relationships.
5.Examples on social networking sites:
a)Facebook:
Launched on February 2004 used by 750,000,000 users.
b)Twitter:
Launched on July 2006 used by 175,000,000 users.
c)academia.edu:
Launched on September 2008 used by 211,000 users from academics and researchers.
d)MySpace:
Launched on August 2003 used by 100,000,000 users.
e)hi5:
Launched on 2003 used by 80,000,000 users.
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