Social networking services (SNSs) have become an important means of communication in the modern world, but they have also created side effects, such as privacy concerns. We explore the impact of the rapid development of SNSs on society, and the positive and negative aspects that have resulted.
May 18, 2012, was a day in global IT history. It was the day Facebook debuted on the NASDAQ as the most valuable company in the history of the US stock market. Billed as the largest initial public offering of the century, Facebook’s first day of trading was nothing short of spectacular. What began with a push of a button by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook’s headquarters resulted in a company value of $112.9 billion after the close of trading that day.
Facebook’s phenomenal market capitalization has sparked interest in social network services (SNS) not only overseas but also in Korea. While SNSs have been on many people’s lips before, such as Twitter, many may not have thought that SNSs would have such a large economic impact. This symbolizes the growing importance of the internet and digital communication in modern society. So, what are the social networking services that have made Mark Zuckerberg an instant global celebrity and an instant billionaire?
Social networking services are services that allow you to build connections online. It’s about connecting with acquaintances to build a network of people that revolves around you, and seeking communication within it. Within these networks, people manage their connections, share useful information and content, and more. In other words, it’s like having your own website on the web with the purpose of creating and maintaining relationships. As a tool for maintaining and developing relationships, social media has become an integral part of modern life.
Whereas community sites such as cafes and clubs that many people used years ago were designed to organize groups of people interested in a particular topic, social media has shifted the focus to the individual. This is a key aspect of social media, which is often referred to as one-person media or one-person communities. This shift reflects the fact that the voice of the individual has become louder and more influential in the digital age. This has been fueled by the smartphone boom. With the ability to access social media anytime and anywhere via smartphones, the rapid delivery of information has become a reality.
Speaking of social media, Twitter is one of them. Twitter has been growing rapidly since its debut in March 2006. Currently, it is estimated to have more than 354 million daily active users. It was launched in South Korea in January 2011 and is known to be used by many famous people. Twitter has played a role in politics, economics, and society, especially through its simple yet powerful way of communicating.
On Twitter, all communication is done in short messages of 140 characters or less. These are called tweets, which literally translates to “chirp”. Because of the small amount of information that can be conveyed at once, you can only post short posts, and you can’t directly attach photos or videos. Instead, you can use hyperlinks to link to web pages that contain photos or videos. These features make Twitter a very useful tool for situations where you need to communicate information quickly and concisely.
Twitter emphasizes one-way friendships through a relationship method called follow, which allows you to subscribe to someone’s Tweets by following them. Following someone doesn’t require their consent; it just lets them know you’re following them. A retweet is feedback on another person’s Tweet. When someone retweets, their followers will see the Tweet they quoted verbatim. Retweeting also quotes another tweet, but it’s more popular because you can attach your own comments or change the quoted tweet.
Facebook is by far the most popular social network. It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, a 19-year-old Harvard University student who started the site in his dorm room, overtaking MySpace to become the most used social network in the world, even in the United States. It spread to Ivy League schools and eventually expanded to allow anyone with an email address to join. Facebook’s success signaled not just the growth of an internet-based service, but the popularization of a new way of socially connecting.
Unlike Twitter, where you can unilaterally subscribe to someone’s tweets, Facebook requires both parties to agree to be friends. You request to be friends with someone, and if they accept your friend request, you become friends. Your timeline is the place where you see all of your friends’ posts in a row. You can interact with posts on your timeline by liking or commenting on them. Facebook’s timeline is an important place for users to document their lives and share them with their friends.
There are many different types of Facebook posts, including articles, photos, videos, and even polls. You can post simple text to express your thoughts, but you can also include links, in which case you can provide a preview. You can also include your location in your post. When you post a photo with a friend, you can also tag them in the photo to indicate that it was taken with them. Your friends will be notified and they can see your photo through the notification message. Facebook also has a great feature that allows you to see all the photos that a specific person has been tagged in at once. This is an important feature to facilitate communication between users and strengthen your network.
Another feature of Facebook is that it suggests people you might know as friends to help you expand your network. This is done through an algorithm based on affiliations and the number of friends they share with each other, and it often surprises users by suggesting people they actually know in real life. These network expansion features have helped Facebook evolve into more than just a communication tool, but an important social platform that fosters connections between people.
The ease with which you can effectively grow your network is a huge benefit of social media. Both Twitter and Facebook have a simple sign-up process that allows for free communication across time and space. This encourages communication between layers and allows for a vast amount of information to be shared. The rapid movement of information from one person to another on social media can have an explosive effect on society. For example, social media played a huge role in Tunisia’s successful democratization. Social media is no longer just an internet service, but a powerful tool for social change.
However, the harms of social media are also on the rise. One of the most prominent is the issue of privacy. Facebook, for example, makes your personal information visible by default. Not only do your posts appear on your timeline, but also when someone tags you, so if you look at someone’s timeline, you can see everything they’ve done. This can be tiring for people who don’t want their personal information to be visible. These issues are leading to important discussions about how to balance the free sharing of information with the protection of individual privacy.
The issue of invasion of privacy is also one of the most prominent. The recent news of a foreign parent company demanding access to a job applicant’s Facebook account to learn more about them was enough to make people cringe. The recent evolution of Facebook’s ads is another controversial topic. Users are nervous about having their personal information compromised, and they don’t want it to be used commercially. In this regard, Facebook is constantly strengthening its privacy policy and providing more tools for users to have more control over their information.
In conclusion, social media has become an indispensable tool in the modern world, with Twitter and Facebook being two of the most influential, allowing people to communicate quickly and conveniently anytime, anywhere. However, they can also have a variety of negative side effects, so it’s important to keep this in mind and think carefully about how you use them. In the future, social media will continue to evolve and change, bringing with it new opportunities and challenges. The possibilities are endless, depending on how we use them.
