Free Custom «Benefits of Social Networking Sites» Essay Paper

To start with social networks offer what the name suggests itself, a liberated platform to socialize. It enables people to reach out to more like minded humans all across the globe. This means that there might be more to human bondage that just the segregation of cast and locality and language that they speak. These cyber meeting points that one might call! Presented themselves as a place where you can meet your friends and family members not limited to your locality, your school, your college, your office workplace etc. Thus it so happened that you could reach out to your middle or high school buddy after so many years just by sorting out members of your old back yard school or local gym or club. After the initial contact identification and finding of your friend what more is there to follow?

The social networks present to you the option of sharing your lives with your friends in a manner for more interactive then just getting to write “hello” or “Hi there”. They present to you free cyber space to upload your pictures and videos, that can be shared with all of your friends and family. Moreover you get to upload in micro seconds your present status as well. Thus building on the same drive for connection the new social network of “Google” on the offering is also interlinking like video streaming and webcam connection too, from peer to peer contacts to even a group or community view. All these channels of association present a very cheap option for communication on national and international level.

What all starting from the drive to meet friends and family has today rendered an environment in the business driven corporate world where social networks like twitter are offering a global hiring platform, they offer an online platform for creative individual to market themselves and also enable professionals in all walks of life to hunt for creative, cost effective and efficient ways to recruit the best for their business from all corners of the globe. It is a place where the whole organization can stay connected, and work in a real innovative manner where financial transactions take place online, data transfer take place through emails, however for run-time conversations meetings and communication you have the social networks themselves. These networks present an environment for indirect contacts between top management and the ground workers, thus making the organization more efficient and the work process less complicated (Benefits of Social Networking Sites).

The binding platform of social networks can also be extended to Educational institutions, to organize their spectrum of education e.g. a start of a new session of class 8^th can begin with joining in a specific social network blog. All the students and teachers being a part of it, all the work assignments, lectures etc may be distributed through the social networks thus promoting the concept of free education, similarly student teacher contact and relationship could also be driven to a new level through efficient round the clock availability of guidance for any academic purposes. Moreover this could also channel an opportunity for inclusion of big names of academic fields for any specific need or guidance, e.g. when a teenager starts to take his first course of physics, how many ever get a chance to meet the great scientists of the country, yet such social networks may present the students with a platform to do so. Even communication with great poets or artists for that matter may become a reality and thus serve as a source of great inspiration for the newbie who is just starting his academic carrier.

Okay! so social networks linked people together, however how many people can reach the platform or have access to them. For said purpose there came into play a large number of third party applicants, e.g. “Facebook” and “Twitter” were originally launched by their own inventors however today you find there applets in your cell phones of any company either Nokia, Samsung or HTC etc. Moreover they also bridged over the mutual rift of Operating systems e.g. windows and Linux etc, Last but not the least modern day High definitions televisions are also coming with loaded applications to support ‘Facebook’ and ‘Twitter’, so you may even want to enjoy the high definition communication with your friends on your giant 4o or 50 inch home theatre from Samsung, or Sony etc. Thus one can say in squeeze of a lemon that social networks have served as a purpose for convergence and divergence in trends of modern day gadgets and widgets.

Another glaring advantage that recently the social networks presented was observed during the uprisings in many Arab states such as Tunisia, Bahrain and Syria etc. As the government keeps a close check on lines of communication and tailors then to their advantage, the cyber connectivity was in intelligently used as a common platform to pass instructions and orders by the common street smart people who were operating against the governments. Similar connection and harmonization over the social networks was observed during the recent security issues in London. As this might reflect to some as a disadvantage instead of being an advantage in its way, the same social networks were then utilized by the London security authorities when they asked people to upload pictures or CCTV videos or any circumstantial evidence of the scene of the crime that they had witnessed, thus it turned up then more than hundreds of the local community people had their mobile cameras or similar imagery devices ready and had captured a lot of evidence. Same was uploaded to the local authorities over the social networks and thus was put to use. This provided a two way channel for order to be restored. (Swallow).

At another front, the social networks also present a descent platform for bussiness advertising and publicity. It enables people living in Asia in small cottege industry hubs like Gujranwala or Gujrat from Punjab Pakistan to promote there industry goods like eastern style of clothings, furniture, handicrafts etc all across the globe. Although the modern world is more prone to using Ebay for said purpose, yet the social networks present a free cyber space to greate a profile of your bussiness or your shop. Upload pictures of your products, and thus use the general tacktics of marketing in the cyber world to attract people and like minded people to your products and thus increase your bussiness prospects (Peters). Thus it is stated by the Interactive Advertising Bureau that internet revenues for first quarter of year s2011 hit a record setting 7.3$ billion, which is an increase of 23% from last year. (Wauters)

Another innovative feature of the social networks are the gaming sessions that they offer, presently Facebook takes the lead in them, by offereing games like ‘Farmville’ and ‘Citiville’ that are played by millions of the facebook users at run time. With such games like minded people get another dimension of common interest and connction, and thus promoting there trends. And in a way these games aspire people to think about there surroundings; farming on cultivative lands that lie around them, or modeling there neighbourhoods in more civic ways. They may be termed as inverse harmonization of thoughts and minds (Social Commerce Today).

A bit advantage that the present day social networking sites presnet to the govenemnt is that they form an easy way to keeping a track on there citizens. While this also may sound a dual edged sword, this sure comes in handy more then often. It is astonishing to note how much of personal data do individuals and communities upload on these social networking sites, thus you have a perons telephone contacts, his addresses, the lastest updates of where he was or with whome he was last night or sometimes back. The pictures and videos provide you with evidance for it as well. And! If this wasn’t enough said social network sites especially ‘Facebook’ keep a complete track of all your information, your chatings with any or all the friends and contacts from day one. Said data is also available to the governemnt authories for utilization when asked for. Thus in a way when general layman think that they are doing what all they do in the cyber world in a hidden place where others cant see or know. The social sites keep a log of it all and a track of it. (Moses)

To conclude with it is precisely acknowledgable that social networks are very much part of your daily life today. There utility and affects over human lives on individual as well as on group bases are bound to show. Thus at all levels of society said change is to be harbored for good, instead of simply fearing it to be another change that we could not stop or resist.