Katie Derington
Computer Literacy INF103
Dr. Edwards-Webster
February 18, 2013
The internet has become one of the fastest growing forms of technology. With its outrageously fast speeds you can find the information you are looking for within seconds. It has transformed the way people communicate with one another and the world. Social web has drastically changed humanity in the way we speak, think, and work. We have so many social websites that drastically effect our lives on a daily basis. Three of the most popular social websites are Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter. Aside from the websites alone, we have email, chat rooms, and web cam capabilities all of which are transforming our communication with the world. Online dating has completely changed the sought out idea of a date. Now you can pick anyone you want to be with by the click of a button.
Social websites are commonly used to communicate with friends, family, and coworkers. Certain websites allow you to publicize your page where you can talk to anyone in the whole world publicly while other social websites are used to share music and videos. Imagine thirty years ago not having to pick up a phone to call someone or not having to wait for pictures to come in the mail. With all these new forms of technology we are able to instantly contact someone through the social websites. We can view pictures instantaneously and even upload a picture straight from our phone to one of the websites that we use.
Facebook is one of the most popular social networking services to date. It allows you to share private messages between one another, add people as friends, and post status updates about what you are doing. You are able to set different privacy settings. You can set your personal page to public which would allow anyone to see what you are uploading and saying, you can set it to private which only allows the users you add to see what you are doing, and then you can customize and share certain information with whoever you want too. “Facebook became the largest social network in the world, with more than one billion users as of 2012, and about half that number were using Facebook every day.” (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1366111/Facebook ) It has completely changed the world in a way nobody would have ever seen coming. Communicating has become so much easier because of this website.
Myspace at one time was very popular and one of the first social networking sites to be published. With other social sites available, myspace has definitely become less favored. The site is owned by an online advertising company, Specific Media and Justin Timberlake. The site is primarily used to share music now. You are able to create your own page and add certain songs to each page. People are able to like and talk about music together. This specific website has changed a lot over the years. The original founder and owner sold this site to the advertising company which deflected a lot of users from wanting to use the site. It kind of turned into a messy situation with a lot of ads popping up everywhere when you were trying to do your own thing on the site. Since then, the website has completely re done itself and people are very interested in using it again.
Twitter is not only a social networking site, but a microblogging website that allows users to post updates with a maximum of 140 characters per post. The post are referred to as ‘tweets’. It is a very popular site with over five million users. Celebrities are especially fond of this site. It is an easy way to let everyone know how you are feeling or what you are up too very quickly and easily. People typically leave their twitter pages public since it is a microblogging site as well. Since the website has been established, Twitter has become one of the ten most visited websites on the Internet, and has been described as "the SMS of the Internet.” ("Twitter.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2013-02-03.)