When talking about social networks, the first thing that comes to our mind is undoubtedly Facebook, the web application that has created an empire based on social interaction. Facebook, with 350 million users, was created by Mark Zuckerberg (to read his biography click here: http://www.biography.com/articles/Mark-Zuckerberg-507402) who now is one of the youngest billionaires in the world. Facebook is constantly launching new applications that contribute to its nonstop updating and modernization (check the following interview made to Mark Zuckerberg about a new function on this social network: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX5pWRVkwsk&feature=fvsr). Also, the trials, disputes, money issues and property right matters that form the chaotic origin of this page, contributed to increase its worldwide fame and unbelievable benefits.
However, social networks aren’t limited to this kind of web pages, there are may others, even though most of them are quite similar. Blogging for example is a wide-spread way of communicating and expressing personal opinions freely. Blogs can be conceived as online diaries, a form of participatory journalism, a two-sided communicative model… and they consist of brief posts on any topic frequently updated by its owner. In what comes to the content, we can describe it as self-generated.
One of the main characteristics of Blogs is feedback, due to its public nature, every individual can leave a personal comment or critic on what has been published, it is thought to be up to 126 million blogs. Hyperlinking, that is, the capacity to interpret the world through the blogger’s eyes, is also a relevant attribute offered in blogs; a powerful device that helps represent the world. Upon, the more blogs that link to your own, the more chance you have of receiving visits and making your blog more popular and recognisable.
Apart from all this, we can also comment that blogging provides a self-directed emission of content in a format that is easy to set up and maintain. Thanks to its personal nature and its diary appearance (as an example check the following blog: www.swankheights.com), the blogger is able to maintain a close contact with his readers in a way that a self-selected reception is created.
Lately, blogging has increased its fame, coming to be a prominent and powerful tool for the public opinion. Anyway, its popularity can still not be compared to Facebook’s, Tuenti’s (the Spanish condensed version of Facebook) or Twitter’s (with up to 300.000 logs in per day) rampant growth. The analysis of this huge amount of online followers makes us consider its harmful addictive aspects, which certainly would end up being a public domain problem in some year’s time.
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Very interesting your post. I really liked it. We can say almost anytime that social networks are part of our lifes and our professions, specially talking about journalism
ResponderEliminarWe could see yesterday in class that eventually, social networks users are rapidly increasing, as well as the activity on them, like in twitter, as we could see that in less than a year the number os tweets had almost doubled!
ResponderEliminarAs a uriosity, I think that Facebook has already reached the 400 million users ;)
Really?? The social networks topic is incredible! Will anybody survive to them?
ResponderEliminarI really agree that blogs have a grat power. They will end up with the tradidional gatekeepers, and citizens will be more powerful than ever.
ResponderEliminarRegarding Lucia´s comment, I must say that citizens are not as powerful as it is used to think Why? Because despite the fact that they enjoy a wider freedom of expression, professionals still decide what is important and what is not.
ResponderEliminar