Now that I've described to few of many social networks that are out there and described their own unique purposes let's explore the overall utilization of this concept. There are pros and cons to anything - plain and simple - to everything; everything has a trade-off, one thing for the other. In the economics part of academia there is one famous saying that most econ students learn in their first year: "There is no such thing as a free lunch". But where does this all lead to?
Social Networking has no doubt change the world. Whether for the better or worse is subjective to the individual. It has brought new wealth to corporations that fiend for any type of en masse method to get their message or brand across. It has created new businesses that thrive solely on the mass popularity of a/the social network to sustain itself. People from anywhere can connect their own representation of cyberspace (i.e. profile) with another person anywhere in the world - even from Iceland to New Zealand - as long as both computers have access to the network from the Internet. "The Internet has flatten the world" is a budding new maxim in our generation. I agree with it (figuratively, of course) and it has made my life a litte more convenient.
In my case I can organize my friends' info into a streamlined database that automatically handles new information as it comes. Now I don't have the convenient excuse of forgetting anyone's birthday because Facebook punctually reminds me everyday of who's birthday that us, subconsciously drilling into my guilt-ridden soul that I should take the minute amount of time to go to their wall and type in "Happy Birthday" to whoever. However, in all seriousness, Facebook had brought me closer to my family in Italy than I can be without physically being there. My grandmother just turned 89 in August and I talked to her over Facebook. With the help of my uncle (who at 58 has a profile and admittedly is above most people his age when it comes to being tech-savvy) I was able to communicate to my grandmother in my broken Neapolitan dialect of Italian to wish her Happy Birthday, tell her about how my life is going here in New York, and ask how she's doing. I could have done this as easily over the phone but there's just a sort of inspiring moment I had when my grandmother, who still drinks wine with her "blended" mush of food and still works the farm on a blue moon, can still have the ability to message me through a device she has only seen in her golden years. Forget businesses and keeping with your old classmates, just being a witness and a participant to that is nothing short of the magnanimous power of the social network.
Now on to the dark side, the tradeoffs. If you honestly think that having a profile on the Internet that contains all of your submitted information is safe from anyone who has any malicious intent against you, I'd suggest never going on the Internet until you learn the world is not, and never will be, perfect. The moment you click that submit button and transfer packets of data that are eventually converted to text, pics, videos, etc., is the moment Facebook, or whatever social network your on, co-owns your property. That's right, Facebook has rights to those suggestive photos of last night's party or your candid shot of aliens in the night sky in the middle of your neighborhood desert. They own every piece of information you put up on your profile and every other profile and they enforce that ownership seriously. Not only that, speaking of that party last night, let's assume you did some things you'd rather not remember let alone let the world know. Well, maybe some of your not-so-honest friends would and, in fact, intend to show the world what happened. Before you even brush your teeth on your way to work/school and you check your email to find an album of pics dedicated to your (dis)honor. What now? You can't take it back; the damage has already been done. Research conducted by Alessandro Acquisti, a Carnegie Mellon University professor of public policy and management has found that individuals' perceptions of privacy are flexible depending on the context of an interaction. In a recent "Information Best Security Practices" conference at the Wharton School at UPenn, Acquisti states that "people [say] privacy [is] important to them, yet they engage in behaviors that indicate a remarkable lack of concern". Your privacy on the Internet is at significant stake no matter what you do or don't. As long as you have a reasonably visible identity on the Internet you are liable for your actions and the actions of others potentially against you. The only way to avoid any and all of these pitfalls is to not participate in any online social system. But...can you resist? Kinda reminds me of the abstinence stance :).
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