Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin...a Comparitive study

INTRODUCTION

Human beings by and large are social. They feel an inherent need to connect and expand their connections. There is a deep rooted need among humans to share. In the past, due to geographical distances and economic concerns, connections between people were limited. A social network is made up of individuals that are connected to one another by a particular type of interdependency. It could be ideas, values, trade, anything. Social networks operate on many levels. Initially social networking happened at family functions where all relative and friends would conglomerate under one roof. Social networking has always been prevalent; it is just that in these times the face of social networking has changed. Where earlier the process was long drawn, involving a chain movement where in one person led to another through a web of social contacts, today the process is highly specialized.

Communication has been instrumental to a large extent to the growth of social networking. With the advent of Internet and the cell phone a lot of social interaction is captured through email and instant messaging. Today there are a lot of online social networking sites where individuals volunteer information about themselves and their social networks. Social networking allows for like- minded people to interact with another. An online social networking site is a place where a user can create a profile and build a personal network that connects the user to other users. What used to be just a niche activity has today taken the proportions of a global phenomenon that engages tens of millions of Internet users.

Online social networks are ideal for exchanging ideas, views, and garnering public opinion; although, these are restricted to the users of the social network. Popular social networking sites, like Orkut, MySpace and Face book are changing the Internet scene. Another social networking programme is that used by a company called Amway. The company operates on the system of multi level marketing. Members make new members and get monetary benefits on the purchases made by down the line members. Members sell the company’s products through social networking. And the members of the company itself constitute a large network, which members use for other businesses as well. The Amway model has been so effective that it has been copied by several other businesses. Social networking sites have recorded phenomenal growth rates. These networks allow individuals to leverage the connections they establish within the social network to achieve a broader objective like job search, a real estate search, a holiday trip plan, etc.

A social network allows independent artists, music labels and video content owners to upload share and sell their content to a community of users with interests in the particular media. Users in turn benefit by being able to sample, hear, download and share songs with friends and other members. Social network groups like Orkut help people get in touch with people they have lost touch with. They also help people to stay in touch despite their geographical distances. Social networking is important as far as an individual’s personal and professional development is concerned. The social network sites have emerged as a powerful and effective means for people to not only link and get linked but to use these services as effectively as possible. The growing popularity of these networking sites only proves the simple truth – Social networking has arrived!.

Facebook

Facebook is an online social networking service. Its name comes from a colloquialism for the directory given to students at some American universities. Facebook was founded on February 4, 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.  The founders had initially limited the website's membership to Harvard students, but later expanded it to colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before it opened to high-school students, and eventually to anyone aged 13 and over. Facebook now allows anyone who claims to be at least 13 years old to become a registered user of the website.

Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, exchange messages, and receive automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups, organized by workplace, school or college, or other characteristics, and categorize their friends into lists such as "People From Work" or "Close Friends". As of September 2012, Facebook has over one billion active users,  of which approximately 9% are fake.  Facebook (as of 2012) has about 180 petabytes of data per year and grows by over half a petabyte every 24 hours.

In May 2005, Accel partners invested $12.7 million in Facebook, and Jim Breyer   added $1 million of his own money. A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook the most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users.  Entertainment Weekly included the site on its end-of-the-decade "best-of" list, saying, "How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?"  Facebook eventually filed for an initial public offering on February 1, 2012; it is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.    Facebook is considered the 5th most successful startup company of all time, by market capitalization, revenue, and growth. At the end of January 2014, 1.23 billion users were active on the website every month, while on December 31, 2013, 945 million of this total were identified by the company as mobile users. The company celebrates its tenth anniversary in the week beginning February 3, 2014.

On January 2014, during the week previous to the company's tenth anniversary, chief operating officer of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg, clarified: "He  Mark  always said Facebook was started not just to be a company, but to fulfill a vision of connecting the world".

Merits of Facebook

1.        Facebook is free and it's one of the best medium for communication.

2.        With the help of Facebook you can connect to different people from anywhere in the world, because almost every people familiar with Internet are using Facebook . This gives us the opportunity to know more about their culture, values, custom and tradition.

3.        Facebook is the most appropriate tool for finding Old friends. When friends go away to any other place, we often don't get the chance to communicate with them. But now Facebook gives us the opportunity to communicate with our Old friend very easily without any cost.

4.        We can share our feelings an what's happening around in our daily life through Facebook. We can also get feedback from our friends about their reaction toward our feelings. It is the best medium to share your feelings and thoughts with others.

5.        Facebook has good privacy setting which gives you the option to maintain privacy according to your wish.

6.        You can use Facebook groups to connect all your close friends together. You can also maintain the privacy of the group by making it private. It also has new features like group chatting, notification, file sharing etc. These features would help the members of the group to stay connected.

7.        Facebook email is very useful too. Facebook now offers us an email address to receive email outside of Facebook such as, Yahoo, Gmail, outlook and Hotmail. The email address is given based on the user name of your Facebook ID. For example, if your username is "DingDONG" , you Facebook email address shall be "DingDOng @ Facebook.com". You can also receive files attachment through Facebook email.

8.        Facebook plays a very important role in getting latest valuable information. Facebook fan pages and users are constantly sharing many valuable news and information.

9.        Facebook advertising and Fan pages are very helpful for a successful marketing campaign to many business organization.

10.    You can chat with friends by using Facebook. The Facebook messenger application is very handy for chatting online.

11.    Many popular celebrity and organization are using Facebook to give regular updates to their fans. So, through Facebook you stay closer to any famous person or organization.

12.    Students can use Facebook for group study by creating a group only for studying. There you can share any information about your projects , homework , assignments , exams , due date etc.

13.    Facebook online games are really popular and addicting. There are millions of Facebook users enjoying Facebook games and cannot pass a day without playing them.

14.    Facebook has thousands of application, quiz, games etc which keeps the user addicted with the site.

15.    We can also use Facebook as social bookmarking site. We can share our article, blogs , photo's etc to thousands of people.

16.    Facebook like button is connecting their user to every other website. With single like button now you can bring everything inside Facebook.

17.    If you have a Facebook login ID than you don't need to waste your time for registering other site. Most of the site now allows us to register instantly by integrating our Facebook account.

18.    Facebook is well designed! There is no fancy color or design available which distracts people. The simplicity in design and efficiency in the performance made Facebook the best Social site in the World.

Demerits of facebook

1.    Facebook is Addicting! For some people Facebook could be more addicting than Cigarette!Using Facebook for your need is actually good for us but when we waste most of our valuable time then it becomes harmful. The biggest disadvantages of Facebook is it's addiction which causes many problems, mostly because it kills our precious time.

2.    Fake profile and ID! Fake profile is one of the biggest disadvantage of Facebook. Now it is easier to create fake profile with a stolen picture. People often use fake profile to insult or harass someone they don't like.Teen girls are more vulnerable to these activities. There are news found that many girls are mentally depressed or committed suicide after being harassed in Facebook.

3.    here are plenty of groups and Fan pages out there which are being created to abuse or violate other religion , personalities , nation etc. This kind of racist disgusting activities is not acceptable in a global site like Facebook. Facebook administrator should take necessary steps against all of these abusing groups & pages.

4.    Many Facebook addicted couples are facing conflicts with their Facebook activities and later files for a divorce. According to a recent study, around a third of divorce filing in recent years contained the word "Facebook". The extra informations found in the Facebook are used as evidence to complete the divorce process.

5.     Facebook often brings bad effects on students results. Badly Facebook addicted students do not get good marks in their exams unless they cheat or way too smart for the class!

6.     People can stalk you and get your personal information by using Facebook. It is highly recommended not to share your personal information publicly.

7.    Beside students, people who works in offices wastes their time in browsing Facebook. That's why many offices have decided to block Facebook completely from their network.

8.    From different sources it is found that, Facebook can be life threatening sometimes. Many unknown people can track your activities and where you are going. As a result you can face trouble. So people should be careful in choosing friends and should try to keep their activities private.

Twitter

Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables users to send and read "tweets", which are text messages limited to 140 characters. Registered users can read and post tweets, but unregistered users can only read them. Users access Twitter through the website interface, SMS, or mobile device app. Twitter Inc. is based in San Francisco and has offices in New York City, Boston, San Antonio and Detroit.

Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass and by July 2006, the site was launched. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with 500 million registered users in 2012, who posted 340 million tweets per day. The service also handled 1.6 billion search queries per day. Twitter is now one of the ten most-visited websites, and has been described as "the SMS of the Internet." It is one of the most successful startup companies of all time by market capitalization, revenue, growth and cultural impact.

Advantage of Twitter

1.      A Powerful Tool for Obtaining Information / news. Twitter users often link to useful sites or articles and can be a source of scoops and alternative news.

2.      To reinforce Personal Brand and awareness If you have established business you can use Twitter to enhance your brand image. On the other hand if you have a smaller business with limited brand awareness then Twitter can be excellent for promoting and establishing your brand among enormous audience.

3.      Get Feedback. Twitter provides you with an opportunity to join a group of interest by following others who are influential within your niche. Twitter also allows businesses to communicate with customers and receive feedback in a casual and cost effective manner. It can prove useful in understanding and obtaining consumer opinion about new products or services or new ideas

4.      Use it as HR tool to Recruit People. Want to hire a good web analyst, web designer, or programmer? Send out a tweet asking for recommendations. This is a very quick and easy way to hire freelancers or even companies based on familiar recommendations.

5.      Marketing Opportunities. Twitter can be used in promoting your products and services. It is a cost effective method to increase awareness about your products or services.

6.      Make new friends. Twitter has a built-in function for you to befriend and track the messages of other users. This is a simple way for you connect with like minded people outside of your usual circle

7.      Event Updates. Twitter can be used as a means to inform event participants and latest event happenings/changes by entrepreneurs. This is a stress-free way to broadcast information

8.      Promotion. Twitter can be used as a promotional tool to announce offline endeavors or upcoming online events (webinars, virtual tradeshows etc). If you are an e-commerce site, perhaps you have a deal of the day or seasonal offers where you can promote these deals.

9.      Twitter and Mobile.  Since Twitter is very simple to use and is limited to 140 characters, mobile use with Twitter is also easy. You can both send and receive updates what you and your friends are doing on the go using a simple SMS

Disadvantages of Twitter

1.      Many twitter user’s privacy and security issues have became a matter of serious concern. Many people feel insecure to use Twitter as it shares all your personal information with third parties. Lots of issues of identity theft, fraud may happen over this medium because of lack of personal privacy that it offers.

2.      Often users find it difficult to express themselves in a precise 140 characters. Moreover, Twitter users can have a single photo and cannot get detail information about themselves.

3.      Through twitter any one can follow you, and you can follow anyone. So you don’t know whether the people who are following you are actually paying any attention to what you want to convey.

4.      Twitter is time consuming. Your work, social interaction can suffer due to your continuous tweeting.

5.      Spams and viruses: When the use of the internet world has increased, the potential risks that one can obtain from the internet have increased as well. What this means is spammers could spam your site or worse than that, can find access to your information through social networks. Social networks could be useful, but if not properly used, then they could lead to more problems.

Linked in

LinkedIn is a social networking site designed specifically for the business community. The goal of the site is to allow registered members to establish and document networks of people they know and trust professionally.

A LinkedIn member’s profile page, which emphasizes employment history and education, has professional network news feeds and a limited number of customizable modules. Basic membership for LinkedIn is free. Network members are called “connections.”

LinkedIn /ˌlɪŋkt.ˈɪn/ is a social networking website for people in professional occupations. Founded in December 2002 and launched on May 5, 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. In 2006, LinkedIn increased to 20 million viewers. As of June 2013, LinkedIn reports more than 259 million acquired users in more than 200 countries and territories.

The site is available in 20 languages, including English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Romanian, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Czech, Polish, Korean, Indonesian, Malay, and Tagalog. As of 2 July 2013, Quantcast reports LinkedIn has 65.6 million monthly unique U.S. visitors and 178.4 million globally,^[11] a number that as of 29 October 2013 has increased to 184 million.

Advantages of Linkedin

1.        Professional Connections : One of the main advantages of using LinkedIn is getting connected with Professionals who are in the similar industry.

2.        Opinions : Another advantage of using LinkedIn is the opinion which comes from various professionals. Yes they are not only opinions but they are experienced opinions which helps you to take corrective decisions for your career or for your business.

3.        Discussions : With LinkedIn you do discussion to the point and you get answers for what actually you might be searching for. There are Question and Answer section where you can ask question related to a topic.

4.        Job Seeking : Every day you will find job postings where companies are hiring people may be in your category. This way you get detailed information about the companies working and it also allows you to get right job for yourself.

5.        New Clients : You can search for new clients, opportunities and business on social media by connecting with people. There are many companies who do advertisements on LinkedIn since the scope of getting intouch with the decision makers on the site is higher comparing other way of online advertisement. Apart from that you also get connected with your old customers who can remember you and may provide new references.

6.        Old Connections : Getting connected with your old college friends or old customers is another advantage, you always get news about their whereabouts.

7.        You can post your resume including all the companies you've worked for and it helps find connections from those jobs for you to add.

8.        You can have recommendations from people displayed on your page. Great to keep track of personal references for resume referrals.

9.         You can join groups related to your business as a way of meeting new people

10.    You can suggest connections from other networking sites add you on LinkedIn and grow your connection list

11.    Increase Social Networking : Using LinkedIn helps you increasing your social networking with various people across the globe. You can start your own company page where other news or announcement can be posted.

Disadvantages

1.      Is not user friendly

2.       There is huge learning curve when introduced to navigating and understanding the sites capabilities.

3.      Lots of data entry, not a great plus for people who don't have a lot of time to spend on the internet

4.      Not a great site for generating leads or getting people to take action to use your services, unless you are a real estate agent

5.       You have to use a photograph of yourself or the site will flag you.

6.      Users do not check their pages daily,

7.       You have to solicit colleagues for recommendation.

Conclusion.

A social networking service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on facilitating the building of social networks or social relations among people who, for example, share interests, activities, backgrounds, or real-life connections. Social networking websites are virtual communities that encourage and foster interaction among members of a group by allowing them to post personal information, communicate with other users and connect their personal profiles to others' profiles. Social networking websites allow members to promote themselves and their interests by posting personal profiles that contain enough information for others to determine if they are interested in associating with that person. Critics of social networking claim that it contributes to predatory or stalking behaviour and can be used to invade privacy. Since many people are free with the information they post about themselves, these websites are frequently used to investigate a person's character and social habits. Popular sites like Facebook and MySpace have been used by potential employers and law enforcement agencies to gather information about individuals.