“The development of the social web--the set of digital tools that allow people to connect with one another and share their stories—offers extraordinary potential to change what voices get heard in the global conversation. This is unlike anything the world has seen in a thousand years.” (Zandt 2010).The social web is growing at a phenomenal rate. It is a network that links people, organizations, and concepts together. In the Web 2.0 world, you have your real world friends and you have your "friends," the people you keep in touch with through social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn. It has defiantly reshaping the way that we live and interact with each other. There are several examples of the social web; Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Instagram and Blog sites are some of the most frequented sites been used today. As time goes on, so do the advances in technology. Over the past years, technology has come a long way from what it once was. Everything is more efficient and faster.
Social Web is a set of social relations that link people through the World Wide Web. These online social interactions range from online activity including online shopping, education, gaming, and social network websites. “The essential ingredient that makes the Internet revolutionary is that people enter into it each day, and they leave a footprint of knowledge and of themselves as they travel through the Web” (Bowles, M. D. (2010) chapter 5)..The Internet opens up to unlimited and universal access. It certainly exists without borders as any sort of information such as text, audio, video or graphics can travel across the world and can go virtually in an instant to and from anyone with a device and web access. It allows you to keep up with the new trends and music. You can network at a faster pace because you get a wider audience and you can get whatever you are trying to promote, whether a product, service, or yourself, out. Billions of people are now using Social Web on a day-to-day basis. This new boom has several benefits that people love.
Some of the benefits of social web is social web is a number one networks that allows you to keep in touch with friends, family, and colleagues. Event invitations can be made and sent to friends rather than having to mail invitations and friends can also rsvp for an event on the site. Social sites allow people to find others with similar interests that they can create a relationship with and get to know one another. Not only is it used to talk to friends, but it is also used to discuss educational topics. “Previous research has focused on using social networks and social software as learning tools within classroom settings and claims have been made about the educational benefits of social networking for learning”.(McLoughlin and Lee, 2007; Riel, 1994, 2005; Riel and Harasim, 1994). Social Networking does not just benefit individuals, but it also benefits businesses as well. These sites allow businesses to advertise and market services to a large audience, and a profile is free to set up. Businesses will gain more attention on social networks because the business profile is available to for all users of the social network to see. We have gain a lot of benefits from using social web but the biggest question for me is, are social web good for our society.
Social web has some risks that we need to beware of as a society. According to the book called Web of Deceit, “For 3 days, keep a journal of all the times you share your name, address, phone number, and credit card number; drive a car through a tollbooth with E-ZPass; use a grocery store coupon card; pay your bills; or answer unsolicited email.” This is a clear indicates of how your identity can get stolen. Our information is not private or as security as we think it is. According to our text “For example, recently Facebook mistakenly sent emails to the wrong addresses. Imagine sending a private email to your friend complaining about your boss,