Social networking provides a way for people to connect and share information online. However, it also presents some security risks. Posting too many personal details online makes one vulnerable to identity theft. Employers may reject job applicants based on inappropriate information found through social media checks. Some users engage in harmful behaviors like phishing scams to obtain private information from others. Overall, social networking is beneficial for staying in touch but users must be aware of potential disadvantages like privacy and security issues.

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Chapter 1 – Social Networking
Define - Social Networking
“An online community of people with a common interest who use a
website or other technologies to communicate with each other and
share information, resources, etc.”
“A social networking site is an online platform where individuals or
group of individuals create a public profile to share same interests with
known and unknown individuals or group of individuals having common
interests.”
Need of Social Networking sites in today’s world
In the 21st
century, people are preoccupied with their busy work life
that they do not have time to spare for themselves. However, they
have platforms like social networking for staying in touch with their dear
ones. There are several web based social network services are
available such as facebook, twitter, linkedin, Google+ etc. which offer
easy to use and interactive interface to connect with people with in the
country an overseas as well. In fact, social networking websites
function like an online community - sharing common interest like
hobbies, photography, favourite TV shows, religion, politics and even
business. Most social media services are open to feedback and
participation. They encourage voting, comments and sharing the
information. Social Media is better seen as two – way communication
where as traditional media is about “broadcast”.

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Where Social Networking Helps ???
Following are the areas where social networking has become most
popular:
Online Marketing : Website like facebook allows us to create a page
for specific product, community or firm and promiting over the web.
Online Jobs : Website like linkedin allows us to create connection with
professionals and helps to find the suitable job based on one’s specific
skills set.
Online News : On social networking sites, people also post daily news
which helps us to keep us updated.
Chatting : Social networking allows us to keep in contact with friends
and family. We can communicate with them via messages. Share
Picture, Audio and video. One can share picture, audio and video
using social networking sites.
Features - Social Networking
# 1.User Profiles :
It should allow its users to create their own profiles on the portal. It
has to have a username and password so that the user can access
his profile whenever he wants. The profiles serve a dual purpose: one,
they allow friends or contacts to identify members from their profiles;
and two, the data entered by the members is used by Social
Networking Sites to connect with other members who have a similar
background.

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# 2.Interactive :
There are some websites which offer to play games with the network
that you have. Also they offer you to play a tournament with the
people who are not in your network.
# 3.Community driven :
The social networking sites were developed with an objective of
community concept. That is, you can create an online community of
people & share same interests topics about one or many subjects.
These communities help the users not only to connect with their old
friends but also helps them to find new friends who share the same
interests.
# 4.Emotion content :
Earlier, when people were using internet they only contained
information. However, in today’s social networking world people can
share their emotions in the content that has been posted on the portal.
People can give immediate responses which helps to solve the problem
faster.
# 5.Search :
The object of a social network is to find friends and expand
relationships. Top social networking websites allows members to search
for the other members in a safe and easy-to-use environment.
Common search functions include search by name, city, school & email
address.

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# 6.Help / Support :
Most social network sites are self-explanatory. However, in case a
user needs help, there needs to be some way to contact the find
webmaster or answer in an FAQs section.
# 7.Free web space & web address :
Each member is provided free web space to publish content. Each
member gets a unique web address that becomes the identity of that
individual or business. The members can then use their web address
or url to promote themselves or their business.
# 8. Notifications and Real time updates :
The Notifications and updates form a very important feature of any
social networking site. The updates can be sent via emails for a new
comment or for further activity on the already published comments. The
notification email typically includes a link that takes the user to
appropriate page/ topic. The notifications help in maintaining and
enhancing the collaborative and conversational spirit of social networking
site.

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Types of Social Networking
The following are the most popular social networking sites :
# 1.Facebook : To access Facebook.com, you must create an account
on the site which is free. Facebook's terms of use state that members
must be at least 13 years old with valid email ID’s. After updating
you're details, your Facebook profile is generated. Using Facebook.com
you can: Browse and join networks, Pull contacts from a Web-based
e-mail account, into Facebook.com.Find friends in several ways,
including search engine to look for a specific person and lot more.
# 2.Twitter : Twitter is a social networking site that allows the users to
quickly share messages, or tweets, of up to 140 characters and with
huge numbers of people. While 140 characters might seem quite
limiting, an increasing number of people and organizations use Twitter
to share opinions and even to advertise products and services. Some
news organizations use Twitter to quickly broadcast up-to-the-minute
news items. Additionally, you can choose to stop following a specific
person’s feed.
# 3.MySpace : On MySpace, your social network starts growing from the
first day. When you join MySpace, the first step is to create a profile.
You then, invite friends to join there and search for your friends on
already profiled on MySpace these friends become your initial Friend
Space. Once the friendship is confirmed all the people in your friends'
Friend Space become part of your network. In that sense, everyone on
MySpace is in your Extended Network. As part of terms of MySpace,
the user must be at least 14 years old to register.

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# 4.LinkedIn : LinkedIn is an online social network for business
professionals, which is designed specifically for professional networking,
to help them find a job, discover sales leads, connect with potential
business partners. Unlike most of the other social networks, LinkedIn
does not focus on making friends or sharing media like photos, videos
and music. To start using LinkedIn you need to register and create a
profile page. To register to LinkedIn, you need to provide personal
information. You can update the profile with your education and job
details and a summary. Additionally, you can also give and receive
recommendations from co-workers and bosses.
# 5. Classmates : Classmates.com is different from most social networks,
in the sense that most of its features are available to premium
member. The price for premium members depends on the length of the
agreement – shorter term results in a higher cost per month.
Classmates.com is primarily used to reconnect with old classmates. The
site features a search engine that lets you view other people who went
to the same school you attended. Creating a basic Classmates.com
profile is free and easy. However, most of the advanced features in
Classmates.com are only available to paid users.
# 6.YouTube : YouTube provides a forum in which people can show
videos about a broad range of subjects, including about themselves and
their organizations. The videos usually include audio/sound, so YouTube
is a very quick, convenient, low-cost way to broadcast information
about yourself and your organization. It's viewed by millions of people.

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# 7.Blogging : A blog is an online journal of information about a certain
topic. The blogger, or owner of the blog, writes or publishes regular
"posts," or articles, about the topic. Posts vary in size from 100
words to 1,000 depending on the nature of the topic. The posts might
be published once a month or even once a day, depending on the
blogger's time and energy for the blog. A blog is a powerful means
for the blogger to establish relationships with stakeholders by sharing
his/her opinions and expertise on a regular basis.
Stakeholders could include, e.g., customers, investors, employees,
community leaders, collaborators and suppliers. The stakeholders read
the blog posts to learn more about the topic and even more about the
blogger.
# 8.Orkut : Orkut is a free social networking website where you can
create a profile, connect with friends, maintain an online scrapbook and
use site features and applications to share your interests and meet
others. The prerequisite for logging on to Orkut is that the user must
be over 18 years old. Currently, Orkut is the most popular in Brazil.
The number of orkut users in India is almost equivalent to those in its
original home in the United States.
# 9.Flickr : Flickr is Yahoo’s popular photo sharing network, which
existed long before other popular image – based social sites like
Pinterest and Instagram excited. It’s still one of the best place to
upload photos, create albums and show off your photography skills to
your friends.

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# 10.Instagram : Instagram is social networking app made for sharing
photos and videos from smartphones. Similar to facebook or twitter,
everyone who creates an account has a profile & news feed. When
you post photo or video on Instagram it will display on your profile.
Other users who follow you will see your posts in their own feed.
Likewise, you will see posts from other users who you choose to
follow.
# 11.Ibibo : Ibibo stands for iBuild, iBond. It is an Indian social
networking site. It is an umbrella site that offers a variety of
applications under its social network. The services offered include
games, blogs, photo unlimited storage, mail, messenger, videos, free
SMS service, mail, polls and surveys.
# 12.Meetup : Meetup is an online social networking portal that
facilitates offline group meetings in various localities around the world. It
makes it easy for anyone to organize a local group or find one of the
thousands already meeting up face-to-face. More than 2,000 groups
get together in local communities each day, each one with the goal of
improving themselves or their communities.

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Advantages of Social Networking
# 1. It helps people to keep in touch with their relatives and friends
from a distance in a very convenient manner.
# 2. Social networking is a perfect way to promote products and
services.
# 3. It can be a perfect medium for someone who expresses
themselves over the internet, and also helps to find likeminded people
to share our views on the same.
# 4. Social networking is a powerful search engines for those who
wants to seek job locally and abroad. Through social networking sites
like Facebook, LinkedIn one can become a member and can also post
relevant information about campus drive.
# 5. It helps students in interacting with one another and share ideas.
This helps in improving student’s creativity.
# 6. The social networking websites can be accessed from any part
of the globe. This helps the students to establish communication with
their teachers and friends through which they can improve their
knowledge.
# 7. These sites help users to refresh their mind and mood, as it is
a great source of entertainment and gaming.
# 8. It helps to make people and community aware of any issue.

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# 9. Through these sites, users can easily get in touch with many
celebrities and their updates.
# 10. These sites also make it easier and faster to collect the
information.
Disadvantages of Social Networking
# 1. People get Addicted.
# 2. Anyone can have access to your private profile information &
misued.
# 3. Social networking can take a lot of your time and can hold you
back from engaging in other important activities such as family bonding.
# 4. It can be used to promote crime.
# 5. People post a lot of comments and thoughts and because of the
time factor they tent to simplify the language which can lead to a
serious language issue.
# 6. Major health related problems can happen as people are logging
on the website till late night.
# 7. People waste a lot of time which hampers productivity.

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Major Security Issues related with Social Networking
For some social networking sites like facebook, providing real names
and other personal information is encouraged by the site ( page called
profile ). This information usually consists of birth dates, current
address, and telephone numbers. Some sites also allows users to
provide more information about themselves such as interests, hobbies,
favourite books or films, and even relationship status. However, there
are other sites such as Match.com, where most people prefer to be
anonymous. Thus, linking users to their real identity can sometimes be
rather difficult.
# 1. Identity Theft : The users tend to give all the personal information
on the site which may lead to identify theft of the information. E.g., if
the user has given his social security number on the site, the hackers
may use that for malpractices. There have been cases where the
people have stolen photographs displayed on the sites. It has been
advised by everyone not to upload too much information on the site or
should hide such information from people whom we don’t know in
person.
# 2. Employment : Issues relating to privacy and employment are
becoming a concern with regards to social networking sites. If a
potential employer uses a social sites to check out a candidate and
then rejects that person based on what they see, he or she could be
charged with discrimination.

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# 3. Online Victimization : Social networks are designed for individuals to
socially interact with the other people over the internet. However, some
individuals engged in undesirable online social behaviour create a
negative impact on the other people online experiences. It has created
a wide range of online interpersonal victimization.
# 4. Phishing Scams : Just like malapps, the amount of people getting
hit with phishing scams is pretty high (over 50% of Internet users get
at least one phishing email per day). Through these scams many
people end up divulging important information such as credit card
details, usernames, email passwords. If you are concerned about
phishing issues have a look at the Anti-Phishing Working Group’s
website for more info.