The Strength of Social Networking Sites

Communicating in today’s society has become a lot easier with social networking sites allowing us to communicate with people through technological devices. Facebook, being one of many social networking sites, allows people to connect with friends and family in our surroundings and across the seas. Originally, Facebook was started in a Harvard dorm room in 2003 by one of its students, Mark Zuckerburg. It began as a social network for Harvard students and then quickly expanded to universities across America. Facebook, as we know it today, started in the year 2004. On September 26, 2006, Facebook became available to everyone age 13 and older with a valid email address. Most participants log on at least once a day. Personally, I long on at least once a day and spend about 5 to 10 minutes checking my messages, posting a comment, and replying to invitations and comments. When I first created a Facebook page, I spent a lot of time chatting with friends and family, as well as playing games that most “facebookers” play, such as Bejeweled, Farmville and Family Feud. As of this morning, 500 million people all around the world are actively using Facebook to stay connected with their friends and the people around them (Zuckerberg, 2010). The social network site has quickly developed into one of the most trafficked networking websites, which runs thousands of databases. By building a network that has spread across various countries, Facebook has successfully created a form of technology that allows people to connect with friends across the seas with different cultures.

Strength of social networking sites

Social network sites (SNSs), such as Facebook, allow individuals to present themselves, articulate their social networks, and establish or ...

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...m), romantic relationship initiation (the original goal of Friendster.com), connecting those with shared interests such as music or politics (e.g., MySpace.com), or the college student population (the original incarnation of Facebook.com) (Ellison, 2007). There are numerous benefits that social network provided for users but these benefits come at a price. Adults tend to be concerned about what the social network like Facebook, twitter, and Myspace do with their data and are worried that they will either be data mined or that they will suffer from identity theft. Facebook is a new phenomenon of our generation with hundreds of millions of users and it is definitely not difficult to add friends, family, and coworkers. However, Facebook is also an easy way to replace the outside world with spending all day surfing other people’s profile, chatting and playing games.