here it goes...heres the end

so it counts down, and its been interesting to see what has been going on in the social networking world. new things are expanding and people are eating it up. look at it as if it was television. myspace and livejournal are network stations, they were the pioneers to this trend, then things started to get more specific towards a more targeted audience, such as facebook for college students or xy.com for the gay community. Those websites represents cable networks because they're made for specific people. that’s a fun way to look at it isn't it? social networking has been huge this year, with the buying and booming factor of YouTube, or the fact that myspace is beginning to be banned from younger children or even that it's reaching our government and they are stepping in. social networking has been able to do so many things.

they first help people connect to others that may not be in their local community. students are able to keep in touch with their friends who go to school on the other side of the country, kids are able to chat about new games that have come out, or there are even support communities for various things. in such a big and busy world, social networking websites allow for all us to connect to people we feel will understand us, and it makes us aware that there are other people out there for us.

along with all the positives of social networks though, there are always problems. with the good comes the bad right? all the predators and viruses that are entwined in these sites are hard to detect and take advantage of the trust of many others. children especially, considering they have not been educated about proper internet use will be able to chat with anyone, someone who may be pretending to be a 15 year old girl but in reality at 50 year old man. these are the scary things about the social networking websites, you never know what is real and what is not. you have to always work off a trust base and sometimes it fails. there are never any clear signs when it fails, so you always have to be aware.

companies should take advantage of social networks, place your ad anywhere and everywhere. get a random video up on YouTube, sponsor myspace for a day, do anything possible to relate yourself to the communities. Victoria's Secret has created a facebook group and it offers discounts to students. this is what everyone wants, to know that these big companies have a softer heart and that they are able to connect with people. in my opinion I don’t think it's taking advantage of the sites because this is where the crowd is and this is what the crowd wants. they want attention. in order to market to this crowd, they would have to do it properly. you can't just have a pop up ad, that would just annoy them, you have to integrate yourself into the crowd, start a myspace page like the show Entourage, have a facebook group like Victoria's Secret or even put up a full ad up on YouTube. People will get to these, and they'll enjoy it as long as you do it right

That’s the key, connect with the people, they're not a number, they're real people.


end song

Nike + Google

So this is more of a co-branding sorta deal, taking advantage of social networkings. Using Google's technical savyness and Nike's content, they are going to develop a website called Joga.com. While this is all in the works, it is said to be a soccer theme website, and memebers are able to join for free and send in photos or emails in and then acess other websites that may be related to their soccer team.

this website is a great idea because it takes advantage of two popular things that are happening now. Anywhere outside of the United States, soccer is the most popular sport and on top of the growing trend of social networking, they are able to "tap" on to all of this and to produce a popular website.

social networking can skyrocket anything that is already popular, and having this already popular sport in the relam of social networking, it is able to become more popular and to give the audience of that sport another way to connect with other soccer lovers.



Nike, Google Kick Off Social-Networking Site

well common, you knew it was going to happen

All right so it has finally happened. Social networks has be exposed to viruses and computer trackers. With such a large popularity with these social networking sites, of course people are going to take advantage of this. These sites have millions in their audience size, people from all over the world and of all age ranges. To hack into these sites and to spread a virus or to add adware on these computers would be simple and hit eveyone fast. So many people log onto these sites and it could be as simple as downloading a video from the website that it would install a virus without you know. "The incident underscores that such content should not be trusted, said Dan Hubbard, senior director for security and technology research at Websense. As more internet companies develop tools for turning their audience into the prime source of content, online fraudsters and data thieves are looking to exploit the systems to reach mainstream audiences, he said."
This is also a very dangerous aspect of these social networks because you are so unaware that you are being tricked. It's not possible to know if a 15 year old girl is really a 50 year old man, now you don't know if the video you're uploading of a cat pooping is really a virus or not. It's neive of all of us to believe that everyone out there is going to be truthful. We probably believe that since this is a social networking and that we're all on it, that no one would want to ruin that. There are people who care deeply about their myspace pages, or their facebook pages but there are also people who just like to mess around with others. It's impossible to have the good without the bad. Now, we all have to be aware of what we open from these pages. Even videos from youtube, which some videos have gotten hundres of milions of hits maybe contain a virus or an ad tracker.
One of the largest social networking systems, called Second Life, which is a basic virtual world on the computer has been hit with these problems. "For about about two hours on 19 November, the company that manages Second Life, Linden Lab, scrambled to contain an outbreak of Sonic the Hedgehog-esque gold rings. The objects spread within a region, slowing down the servers that maintain the Second Life world, or grid. It's the third major attack since September, each time the world has been overrun with quickly reproducing digital objects that have taken hours to clear out of the system." Even with people who monitor Second Life down to a dime, there are still people out there who can get around them. These are the people who don't pose as threats and just pass through without being detected. They are very good at being able to blend in with everyone else and so there is no need to take notice on the person's doings online.
It's going to be hard to stop this, and it's even going to be harder to be aware of this. None of us want to think that it can happen with us, so there is no need to worry about opening a file. There is also no way to tell if you were to download the program if someone else already got a virus from it. The only way to help this is to just let others know of what you find out about a certain video or your experiences with the websites. If they're going to take advantage of the social networks, then you should also to try to stop them.

Social sites' insecurity increasingly worrisome

yahoo you did it again

yahoo is developing a new program which would have the ability to send messages on phones and to send pictures among friends. this is their verison of a social network system for phones. this program is fairly new and in order to test it out, they are promoting it around college campuses, which is yahoo's biggest target audience. According to the article " The service is centered on making it easy for groups of friends to use text messaging as a way to organize a party, meet in a restaurant, attend a football game or arrange any other social activity. Yahoo expects users to form a lot of ad hoc groups around particular events, and use the service's "reply-to-all" feature as way to communicate collectively. Individuals can also have private conversations, and people have the option whether to join a group. The creator also has the option of kicking people out." yahoo is following the trend of using all internet features on mobile phones.

mobile phones now a days are able to do anything, and the fact that yahoo is developing this program just proves that social networking sites are branching out and is here to stay. myspace already has a contract with Helio (but i have to say, apparently it is not a phone) which allows uses to acess their myspace pages, yahoo wants other to do the same using their program. this program must be very convincing though because, a lot of my generation grew up with the internet and will be able to surf through myspace or facebook pages but many of us are attatched to the features of our phones. there are generations that just want to be able to make phone calls, we just want to be able text and call...its the younger generation, the one right below me that this would probably be more influential. think about it, many of us may be paying our own phone bills, and i would not pay extra for something i may already be able to do or just go to the internet to use. younger teens still have parental funds to use and therefore probably would try out this program. myspace and facebook, programs as such has already been instilled in my generation but with younger ones, they're still looking for new things and this would be perfect for them.

mixd...yahoos new program
yahoo quietly launches mobile social-networking service

now the goverment?

all right so we all know, everyone who is capable of getting access to the internet will. For example, there are public libraries, your friends house and even your own school. All of these public places have the capability to provide people, especially younger children with access to social networks and chat rooms. At home, parents are able to monitor the activities of their children, for example blocking chat rooms and even myspace pages. If children are not able to access these websites at home, they are always able to go to public places to access them. At this point, there is not really a chance to monitor the actions of younger children who don't know better. To sign up for myspace, all you need is a valid email address and you can pretend to be whoever you want on the internet. despite how often we tell children that there are untrustworthy persons out there on the internet with them, there is always failure to listen. the government now has taken a stand on this and may propose a law that would forbid public accessible places to allow children to get to these pages. most of the participants of these websites are younger children. even though many social networking sites are trying to monitor their "customers" and trying to meet safety issues brought up by parents, it is still not able to monitor everyone. with this new law, trying to be passed by republicans, the government will now be able to have more control of this. at this point though, it doesn't prevent children from accessing it from their friends or to sneak on to these websites. minors will always find a way to get access to something, anything if its illegal or just banned. at that point, doesn't myspace seem more cool and exciting if you're banned from it? this isn't addressing the problem head on because even at home, children aren't safe from predators online. there needs to be more awareness of surfing the internet and to understand that not all people out there are friendly.

social networks are geared more towards children that are not considered minors anymore, since a lot of the advertisements are for R rated movies or over 21 shows. in this case though, when adults are using it, wouldn't kids want to use it more? there's only so much that kids can do that are the same as what an adult is allowed to do. theses social networks do not put an age restriction ( at least over 13) an so therefore, teens are able to be part of this new growing fad. most registered users may have started off as teens or still are teens now. banning them will not stop these users from it, but perhaps there should be a better monitoring system from the government. in my opinion, not allowing people to have access to these sites from public places is just avoiding the problem/ in fact, it's not the children's fault that there are predators on the internet. it's not teens fault, instead it is the adults fault. the website themselves are not to blame because it's not as if they invite these people to join. everyone will end up working around everything, kids will be able to still get on these websites and predators will still be able to get access to the internet. it's just the results of having such a public domain to people.

Lawmakers take aim at social networking sites

theres a new way to social network, and of course who else would have created it other than ipod. its not new infact its more popular than you think, its podcasting. everyone is getting into it, if you go to the itunes store, there are podcasts from celebrities just talking, you're able to make your own podcasts just as broadcast news. this form of social networking works in a werid way, first of all, one person creats the podcast, its not really a community thing from people that live in different places. but one person creats it and then its able to spread to everyone else. then everyone is able to "bond" over these podcasts. anyone can create one, and it doesn't necessiarily mean that the guy who creats his podcast from the public library, but it still allows him to do it.

"Podcasting has traditionally been a static, top-down medium, but we see that it will be a dynamic social experience," PodJournals President Steven Schuldt said in a statement. "We let you do more than just easily create and subscribe to podcasts, we let you create dynamic public and private 'friendcasts' which give you the audio and video you're most interested in via a single podcast."

Mac News : Podcasting

pay me? thank you

Great news, no I take that back, better news. Now you can get paid to blog. Not from a company directly, but from a company who just wants reviews of products and services. You are able to get paid for this, from$20 dollars to even $200. All you gotta do is sign up at the website and they will evaluate your blog, and determine if your blog is popularenough, meaning it has enough traffic that people will see your reviews. This is also open for companies to submit their products for people to review it, and that’s much more helpful if you’re from a small company or offer a service that most people don’t know about. This will give practically free advertising. Even though these are “paid” blog reviews,it doesn’t mean that they are swayed one way or another because you getpaid no matter what. According to InformationWeek.com, it says that Reviewme.com is planning to extend their offer because they did not anticipate how many people would want to participate.
After Tuesday’s class about blogs, and how few people are actually awareof it ( I believe it’s 8% of internet users) that how helpful could this be overall? The only people who read blogs are other bloggers and thenit’s a roundabout circle. It’s very rare that a blog will blow up so big that it will get a country wide attention. It just shows that thefollowers of blogs and it’s community believes that this will get biggerand blogs will become the next myspace.
The main reason I can see why it might not get big is that blogs are verypersonal, mostly opinion based, and how many of us are willing to sitthere and read something that goes against our own opinion? Not that allblogs go against your opinions, but that may be a large part of the blogsyou come across. Secondly, this is a big problem of mine, but updating issuch a hassle. There’s so much more going on in my life, and I’m just astudent, you couldn’t only image someone who has a 9-5 and children. How is it possible to keep up with all of this?
A good reason why this will still blow up is the same reason as why it won’t. It allows people to express an opinion and everyone wants thatattention, to be heard. Blogger is becoming huge, I already have two (not by choice mind you) but yet, it makes a lot of people aware that theyexist. Businesses have blogs about their own company, celebrities haveblogs, even the Park School has a blog. It will get to a certain point where people start to catch up, one they realize how to balance outeverything else in their lives.
Reviewme.com

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