done by 41363632
Introduction
Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development of social network service and web applications, Such as facebook, myspace, lastFM. Those website are successful, they provide an environment for users to interact, they have various fun applications, activities, and users enjoy it. With such great benefits it is important that people should understand the reason why it is good and should also aware the disadvantages.
In this article I will focus on the successful example of a social networking, facebook. This airtcle will review the benefits and the obverses of this service.
The benefits
In reality, do you know everyone in the classroom at uni? Do you know all their names? Do you talk to them at all? For me, honestly, I only talk to my group mates and few other classmates, we have about 25 people in our course, but I still don’t know someones’ name, and I’ve never talked to them. Facebook solved this problem.
“People You May Know” function on facebook is very interesting and powerful. It is an function on facebook that based on social proximity, it collects and analysis my friend list, it will find the persons that exist on both our friend lists, then it tells me the person that I may know and it lists the mutual friends at the same time. Since I added my group mates as friends on facebook, I found more classmates which study in the same course. We both have our photos in the profile and the profile is in very detail, so we can know each other very quickly just by few clicks. When we next time meet in class, we already knew each other. Back to reality, we usually cannot get those information(eg. age, address, mobile phone, interests) so quickly in first meeting. We also unable to know how many mutual friends we have. On facebook, it just shows a list of your personal information, like a “product description”, it is so efficient that makes itself one of the most successful social networking site.
I also found one of primary school classmate on facebook, and we invited 20 more people in a month through “people you may know”, it almost the half class. We created a group for our class, it’s like a little community, I felt I went back to the old time. I also posted our graduation photo on the group space.
Friend list is one of my favourite tools. In December 2007, Facebook launched a new “Friend List”. The new friend list let users organizing hundreds of friends easier, it also made fac
ebook more popular. According to “comScore”, Facebook is the leading social networking site based on monthly unique visitors, having overtaken main competitor MySpace in April 2008. If you look the graph carefully, the line goes up straight away after 2008, which is one month after the friend list update. The friend list is also one of my favorite tools, the “status updates” button is very useful in the list, it shows friends which with recent status updates. Every time log on, I always check the updated friends first, there are so many new stories, fun things happened to the online community everyday with photos, videos and it made me feel so “real”, just like everything happened before my eyes. The interface of friend list is very straightforward, easy to operate but very detailed. I’m impressed because there is an option actually shows my college mates.
The concern
An interesting thing about facebook is that you can be friends with a stranger. For example the first friend on my facebook is a person that I never met before, he add me as a friend because we have similar interests, which people can find in our profile. We chat on facebook via the little messenger down the right corner, and share our experience on import sports cars. After knowing each other on the internet, we are good friends in real life now.
However it also brings out the safety issue. I published my personal information which is good for making new friends and sharing information but on another hand, someone is able to use these information now. Many Internet-safety experts remain skeptical that parents and educators can let their guard down on the posting of personal information at sites like Facebook and NewsCorp.'s MySpace. "For a long time, we really didn't know," said Michele Ybarra, the President and Research Director of Internet Solutions for Kids. "It made sense if you post or send information you increase your risk. It's also a very easy message: Don't post personal information and you'll be safe." In a separate study of 2,574 law-enforcement agencies, researchers found that online-sex crimes rarely involve offenders lying about their ages or sexual motives. The 2004 study, published in Journal of Adolescent Health, said offenders generally aren't strangers, and pedophiles aren't luring unsuspecting children by pretending to be a peer
The privacy issue is really need to be concerned. I was looking at an user’s basic information, it shows his face, and also lists all his friends. According to the picture below, there is an option “View Friends”, any user is able to view his friends without any permission. I’m pretty sure there are some his friends only want their friends to see the information but not anonymous. Despite those information is limited, but everyone can see the user’s face, the network he uses and all the friend he has, that is obviously a privacy issue and a safety issue. According to Neil Izenberg, “First rule of smart surfing? Remain as anonymous as possible. That means keeping all private information private.” I will feel uncomfortable If my face and name has been exposed to the public.
The interesting thing is the default setting of a new user's basic information. look at the picture below, it allows the users in the same network to see your profile, personal information, and more. I'm curious about it, so I registered a new account to test if it is true and how it shows all the information so easily.
I pretend an new user, and start to register, fill all personal information including my date of birth, my hometown, neighborhood and the university I'm studying at. The registration has finished but facebook didn't tell me anything about the information has already opened to the network I joined in.
So I log in another account, search users in "Unversity Of Queensland 2007", there are only 18 people, and I found the account I just created, clicked on the name tag and all the information appeared. I have his photograph, his name, his university, and his address！The new user just exposed all his personal information. Not all users on facebook are able to see the profile, but the users on Australian network can see it just by few clicks. besides, acoording to the information from facebook, there are 2,689,009 people in the Australia network.
Conclusion
Almost every student has a facebook account nowadays. Facebook users have created their own communities in the network. These are linked to their work, school, region or common interest. Facebook has bridged many tens of millions of different people all over the world. It is powerful and fun, but there are safety and privacy issues really need to be concerned. However there is no necessary to post sensitive personal information, once the information has been published online, it is not private anymore.
Techtree News Staff (
“Facebook Is Not Only The World’s Largest Social Network, It Is Also The Fastest Growing” , techtree.com http://images.techtree.com/ttimages/story/92134_tab3.jpg
Izenburg N. 'Safe surfing tips for teens'. Kidshealth.org – TeensHealth. http://kidshealth.org/teen/safety/safebasics/internet_safety.html
Ybarra, L. et al. Internet Prevention Messages: Targeting the Right Online Behaviors. Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine, 2007; 161: 138-145.
Sieving, R. E. Beuhring, T. Resnick: “Journal of Adolescent Health.” 2001, VOL 28; NUMBER 1, pages 73-81.
4 comments:
Your article is structured very well. It is easy to read each section with images that enhance the reader's understanding.
On the reflection part, I agree with you on since the informaiton is published, it is no longer private. I believe it is a potential problem but the risks can be reduced if people could be more sensitive on strangers over the internet.
The only thing I'd suggest is to "Center" all your text content so it looks more professional.
Overall it is a well done job! :)
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