socialnetworkingsoftware

Please see my comments in the reference section

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Social Networking Software: Comparison and Personal Experience

Abstract

Since in the big internet boom, a time when the internet became widely available to the populous of the industrialized world, social communication through the internet has become a major sector of internet traffic. As a result, the internet has become populated with many types of social networking software. Everyday, people use such software to send emails, instant message, post video feeds, send text messages and post blogs – just to name a few. The intent of this paper is to take a close look at social networking software and examine the functionality and importance of such. Several social networking software are closely examined, compared and contrasted. Finally, a subjective evaluation of all the software discussed is presented.

Introduction

In today's busy world, it is very difficult to stay in touch with friends, family and colleges. Using Internet as a main source of communication helps alleviate this difficulty. There are various internet tools that are offered, and each of them allows users to communicate and share personal thoughts.

Online social networks are webs of relationships that grow from computer-mediated discussions. The webs usually grow from conversations among people who share a common interest and who differ in other ways. Social networks grow from the personal interactions of human beings over time, as well as from the technological infrastructure that connects those humans.

Social networking sites first appeared in 2002.According to an article found on Wikipedia, more than 300 social networking sites exist. This includes two of the largest social networks, Facebook and MySpace, which boasts more than 130 million members. Most of these networks were designed to bring together existing friends in our ever-mobile world or to meet new friends. Users of the social networking sites share messages, music, photos, personal profiles, videos, etc.

History

The movement of social networking on the web initiated with people wanting to reconnect with classmates. Later on, it developed into sharing messages, music, and videos, extending to sharing cultures. There were many early efforts to support social networks via computer-mediated communication, including Usenet, ARPANET, LISTSERV, bulletin board services. Early social networking websites included Classmates.com (1995), focusing on ties with former school mates, and SixDegrees.com (1997), focusing on indirect ties. User profiles could be created, messages sent to users held on a "friends list" and other members could be sought out who had similar interests to yours in their profiles. Social networking began to flourish as a component of business internet strategy at around March 2005 when Yahoo launched Yahoo! 360°. In July 2005 News Corporation bought MySpace, followed by ITV (UK) buying Friends Reunited in December 2005. Various social networking sites have sprung up catering to different languages and countries. It is estimated that combined there are now over 200 social networking sites using these existing and emerging social networking models, without counting the niche social networks made possible by services such as NING and KickApps.

Types of Software

Facebook ( http://www.facebook.com/ ): Facebook is a growing social networking site that has grown to be one of the biggest social networking sites on the internet. Facebook allows users to create a profile page, which is the primary area of interaction between people using the service. Users connect to one another by becoming "friends" through the website, from here the users have the ability to fully view the profile pages of their friends. Also, users can upload albums and photos, thus enabling friends to see them. Fun wall is an interesting way of communication. The Facebook Wall allows users to post messages on the profile of their friends. A user's wall, dependent on privacy settings, is visible to anyone who is able to see that user's profile. The Photos application is one of the most popular on Facebook, since users can upload an unlimited number of photos. One of Facebook's biggest advantages is the amount of people that are currently using it, this popularity means that it will be very easy to find people or groups that are of interest to you in one way or another.

              Ning ( http://www.ning.com/ ): Ning is an interesting service that essentially allows you to create your own social networking site. By creating a site and adding friends you start to create a social network based around a certain idea that your Ning site focuses on. For example, YSU's ENGR 6923 has a site that started out with only students and the professor being members. Shortly after the conception of the site the population increased to include many other members that are not directly enrolled in the class, but interested in the subject material. This networking added new information to all parties involved and enriched everyone through mutual cooperation and sharing of information.

            LinkedIN ( http://www.linkedin.com/ ): LinkedIN is another important social networking site that focuses on professional networking. Creating a LinkedIN profile allows companies to view a page that tells as much about your career as you want. LinkedIN also allows you to join professional groups that can help you in obtaining work or keeping you abreast of current developments in your field. LinkedIN offers a more professional and business like format, and is a great resource to keep a professional profile upon.

           Pownce ( http://pownce.com/ ): Pownce is version of social networking that relies upon messaging between friends. It allows you to send messages, pictures and the like to friends that you've made through the service. Pownce also allows users to mark and link profiles from other internet services like blogs, flickr, LinkedIN and others.

          FriendFeed ( http://friendfeed.com/ ): Friendfeed is an interesting social networking site, which allows users that are using multiple social networks to provide themselves and others with details on all of their activities on various social networks that they use. The best way to describe FriendFeed is to compare it to an RSS feed. You start by networking with friends and adding social applications to FriendFeed, once all of your applications are added to FriendFeed your friends will be able to keep track of any new developments that relate to you in the added applications. The opposite is also true, once your friends add their social applications to the site you'll be able to keep track of their activities on those sites.

           Twitter ( http://twitter.com// ): Twitter is essentially a mass instant messaging service. It allows a person to post a short message, which is then delivered to everyone on that person's Twitter friend list. Hyperlinks can be texted across the service, but the tool is limited to sending text to friends.

Comparison of Software

One of the main features that distinguishes Facebook from Pownce and Friendfeed is the fact that is does not directly share websites and random feeds that users may log on their accounts. Although Facebook gives users the opportunity to incorporate "applications" onto their profile, its main feature is to simply link people to people they know and provide the user with a simple, yet informational profile. In addition, Ning and Facebook are a similar entity in the fact that they are both user profile based. Ning is more GUI based than Facebook, and offers the member a multitude of ways to make their profile flashy. LinkedIn, pownce and FriendFeed give subscribers a more professional touch. LinkedIn is a professional resource social network and relatively devoid of personal interest categories that many of the users of Facebook use. Pownce and FriendFeed show users what other users like to look at and is a tool that can help people keep track of webpages, much like adding the webpage to the favorites folder of your Internet explorer or firefox. The only difference is that those sites are set in a public domain. Additionally, one other program that has been seeing more attention from the online community is Twitter. Twitter allows people to "text message" back and forth about what they are doing. Text is limited so messages have to be short. Twitter can be linked to a mobile device so that it messages the device when a new post occurs within a twitter page. The short comings of this program is that some people can become overzealous with their "twittering" and post an incredible amount of material on-the-fly. One recommendation that I would make is to limit the amount of posts one person can make on a timed basis. Similar to AOL Instant Messanger, Twitterers should only be able to post as many as about 4 posts in a row within a relatively small time frame before the Twitter system times-out and suspends their Twittering for several minutes. This may impede "super twitterers" from abusing their privileges.

Ease of use, privacy and security(Phaneendra Kolli)

Social Networking sites are specifically designed user friendly. We are given options for every movement in every single page. There lies the popularity of the site, depending on how easily a user can handle it. Privacy is also a very big concern in these sites. Recently changes are made that enable user to permit all friends or a limited number of people to view their profile. Photos, videos and any private files can be locked by the users in some networks. Facebook's privacy site describes several such controls. Users can reduce what appears in their profile and what information about their online activities is public, such as their use of specific Facebook applications. Coming to the security, they are not very secured. Users can also block specific Facebookers from seeing more than a limited profile, or from finding you via search. While social networking sites can increase a person's circle of friends, they also can increase exposure to people with less than friendly intentions. Realizing that perceived security gaps could lead individuals and companies to shun their sites, big names like Facebook and LinkedIn allow you to adjust how much information about you — posts, photos, online status and other factors — others may access. We can use privacy settings to restrict who can access and post on your website.

Ease of use, privacy and security (Purushottam Panta):

The ease of use is very important factor for the social networking software. The all features and the facilities should be clearly appeared in a user friendly view. User should not be confused to find out the facilities in the website. Facebook is really easy to use, we can have a clear idea how to login at the homepage of the facebook. But, http://www.linkedin.com/ doesn’t provide us the login facility at the home page, we have to be in: https://www.linkedin.com/secure/login?trk=hb_signin

Page to sign into the linkedin social networking. In the same way, we have a couple of important constraints Privacy and Security.

Let’s first talk about facebook. Facebook has set a reasonable privacy. The user has option to set the profile public/private in a particular network or public/private for all and so on. We have to login to see the profile of the facebook user. In the same way we have facility to set the profile public/private in linkedin also. In Ning, we can create a group and invite peoples in the group. Collaborate among the people. Set the privacy for individual in the group. In the same way the other social networking softwares has set their privacy option.

When we are talking about the security, I prefer facebook because I have experienced that they take action early in the security issues such as reporting abuse, reset password. Facebook have an error-free page render in the browser. Whereas other social network softwares will take more time to render the page. Still sometimes the pages renders in the browser with some scripting error that prevents proper display of the page. Unlike facebook, cookie expiration time in Linkdin, pownce, friendfeed and ning twitter is lengthy which is not good for security practice.

Personal Experience w/ SNS (Everyone to contribute something from their own experience(s))

Written by Jon Unger on 4-9-08

One of the main features that distinguishes facebook from pownce and friendfeed is the fact that is does not directly share websites and random feeds that users may log on their accounts. Although facebook gives users the opportunity to incorporate “applications” onto their profile, its main feature is to simply link people to people they know and provide the user with a simple, yet informational profile. In addition, Ning and facebook are a similar entity in the fact that they are both user profile based. Ning is more GUI based than facebook, and offers the member a multitude of ways to make their profile flashy. LinkedIn, pownce and FriendFeed give subscribers a more professional touch. LinkedIn is a professional resource social network and relatively devoid of personal interest categories that many of the users of Facebook use. Pownce and FriendFeed show users what other users like to look at and is a tool that can help people keep track of webpages, much like adding the webpage to the favorites folder of your Internet explorer or firefox. The only difference is that those sites are set in a public domain. Additionally, one other program that has been seeing more attention from the online community is Twitter. Twitter allows people to "text message" back and forth about what they are doing. Text is limited so messages have to be short. Twitter can be linked to a mobile device so that it messages the device when a new post occurs within a twitter page. The short comings of this program is that some people can become overzealous with their "twittering" and post an incredible amount of material on-the-fly. One recommendation that I would make is to limit the amount of posts one person can make on a timed basis. Similar to AOL Instant Messanger, Twitterers should only be able to post as many as about 4 posts in a row within a relatively small time frame before the Twitter system times-out and suspends their Twittering for several minutes. This may impede "super twitterers" from abusing their privileges.

As far as the future is concerned, I will most likely choose to keep Facebook as my main social networking site. It provides all the major utilities that I would want and also has most of my friends connected to it. In addition, Facebook is a growing company and is much like Microsoft in the respect that they now have the personnel, programming, and money to drive Facebook in a successful future.

Written by Dan Martin:

I would have to agree with the above statement. Facebook would be my first choice in using social networking sites our of all others. Most of my friends are using Facebook and coworkers are using Facebook which make it prettty convenient to interact with them and have casual conversation. It also provides many features and applications that are relavent for what I want to do. Facebook is, in my option, the most friendly and intuitive program to use. The thing I like the most about Facebook is that I can have multiple groups of interaction including my friends, work colleagues, adn distant family members.

Written by Phaneendra K Kolli:

Before taking this course the only social networking site I use is orkut. I started using Facebook as part of my course. It seemed to be very intresting. There is a big scope for applications in Facebook. I picked it as my mail social networking site now, because I can also view other imported networks like friend feed, digg,delicious etc. It also have lot of features like creating communities,groups and managing work by myoffice application. Linkedin is best for connecting with in the a particular organizational community. Ning is good for creating a community of your wish and inviting people. Twitter is easy to use and the cellphone alerts are the main use of this site. Friendfeed keep track of my friends activity getting imported to facebook.

Written by Purushottam Panta:

I also prefer to work on facebook network for the reason that I am locked-in with facebook. Because most of my friends are using facebook and so I can collaborate with most of the friends from facebook. Secondly, I am much familiar with the tools and applications on facebook and I am much comfortable with the interface provided on facebook. Thirdly there are a number of useful applications such as del.icio.us, stumbleupon, rss feeding, note,... with error-free rendering in a different browsers. Yet, In Linkedin and Pownce, I found several times the error execution (such as javascript error) when rendering in browser. These social networking softwares doesnt have even a minimum level of security (Such as cookie expiration setting), anytime the link may direct to our account setting or other unpublished information if we have not sign out from the account. But, facebook handles these minimum requirements for security also. So, I have experienced that facebook is a better networking among other social networking.

Written by Chris Allen:

Before experiencing/evaluating the SNS mentioned within this article, I really didn't understand all the hype being generated about these applications. I used to think that the only way to keep in contact with friends/networks was through e-mail. However, now that I have taken several types of SNS for a "test drive", I can see why so many people have adopted them as part of their "browsing" routine. Upon logging on to the internet, I used to check my e-mail and then browse all of my news sites; now I find myself logging on and checking Twitter, Facebook, and NING to see what everyone is doing and what they have to say. After I catch up on what is going on with my network, I then check my e-mail. Actually, I find myself checking my e-mail less and less, now that I have a much better means of keeping up with everyone. In talking with others, I and finding that they too are adopting the same methods. I am very curious to see how all of the current SNS developes over the next few years; I think if we were to compile another article like this in two or so years, the content and opinions would be drastically different. Let's see where it takes us.

Written By Dimitrios Hazimihalis

The only experience I have with social networking programs is very minimal. Before enrolling in this class, I never even thought or cared about using social newtorking programs. The way I kept in touch with people or colleagues was through email or cell phone. Honestly, I thought that social newtorking websites like Myspace and Facebook were for high school students. Now after some research and practice using the programs for this course, I realize their importance and value. I know that most of the software that we are using are fairly new and still maturing, so I feel that after some practice I will be able to effectively use these programs as it pertains to my career and personal interests.

Written by Snezana Aleksic:

Before this course, I was not a user of the SNS. I have mainly used e-mail as a communication tool with my friends and colleagues. Researching different types of the SNS as a part of my assignment, I discovered various options offered by these programs. Facebook and Pownce have similar options that allow users to communicate and stay in touch. They are usually used as an everyday communication tools and serve for fun. I like Facebook, and I discovered that a lot of my friends use it too, so I will definitely use it in the future. Ning is a great tool for collaboration among teachers and students, as we use it in our class. LinkedIn is an excellent tool for the business world. It allows users to create and maintain a list of their professional contacts (and friends as well). I have positive impression about it, since I can provide my background information, as well as my professional information, and they are available on the Internet. Friendfeed is useful for individuals that like to keep track of all their activities on all other social networking sites. That can cut time spent on the Internet, since a user can find all information in one place. Twitter is also a useful tool, since it enables people to interact through SMS and instant messaging. Using twitter seems to be very easy, which I believe to be the main reason of its popularity. At the same time mobile (cell phone) updates are the perfect solution for people that prefer to be in touch with their friends at all times.

Written by Looja Tuladhar

These days i use facebook a lot as a social networking software. Adding, removing, inviting friends, updating own profile are the common feature of this social networking programs. It has the simple and user-friendly interface. We can have collaboration through groups, events, personal message, chat, group message etc. We can observe the recent activities of the person in the friend list and can search friend in smart way. In ning (http://www.ning.com/) we can create create a social network and invite people to join or one can join to the social network with someone’s invitation to join to the network. We can create a group in the network and share the information within group. Currently we are using a group network called infotechtools created by our lecturer.We can post our discussion message in the whole network or in the group. I think this one is better for sharing information with friends.Linkedln is somewhat similar to facebook. Here we can import the contacts from our different email address list such as hotmail, yahoo, gmail, AOL to add them in our network. This social network is business oriented. This is very useful for employers and job seekers etc. Pownce is also one of the free social networking and micro blogging site. Here you can easily post message to the whole group or to individual people. We can import contacts from different networks and email address books such as facebook, digg, gmail, hotmail, aol. Other thing I like about it is we can post our other profile through our URLFriendfeed allows us to use multiple social network. We can add a number of services such as RSS, facebook, googletalk, Pownce, twitter, you tube, account profiles to this network.We can post a message to the people in our subscription list and read the message from them.

I have created a big network of my friends and relatives on facebook. People are facebook more than other social networking program. However for my professional networking I would like to use Linkedin because it is built in such a way that it looks professional and is designed for the same purpose also.

Written by Hadi El-Chammas:

From personal experience, I think Facebook is more advanced than the other social networking softwares and offers more variety of applications. It is more convenient and connects people based upon their location, profession and college/high school. I think Twitter was little bit limited and dry when it comes to personalizing or adding widgets and applications. Facebook might have some limitations, such as limiting some people from adding friends to their network after a specific number, however i don't think this will be a problem for me since my network will never reach that size.

Written by NAVEEN GENTE:= o />= O />= O />= O />= O />= O />= O />= O />= O />= O />= O />= O />= O />

Before this class I used to use some of the social networking tools like orkut, Google talk, yahoo messenger, but I think they are just for chatting and file sharing. They don’t have some such advanced features like group’s etc. as in our list I still would like to go with NING, because I found this as user friendly, easy to manage, easy to use, post, know the updates, upload, comment, manage, manage friends like adding, deleting, grouping, fallowing, etc, even though many in our class like facebook, I haven’t eased myself on this, I don’t have many friends on it, even more than that I am not comfortable with facebook as much as I am with NING. I think in the near future I would like to use linkdIn, because I felt, this is a perfect tool for professionals, to market them self, like an online resume, which is a best part in professional or business field, to update our self and our life. All the others do have their own advantages, like sms in twitter, posts and links on friendfeed etc, but my conclution is to go with NING.

Written by Bryan Gall:

I have already written alot at the bottom of the page, but in terms of personal experience I don't have any with the programs we have used before this class except Facebook. I have enjoyed the ease of use and the many options available for a few years now. My experience with the other programs from class has all been positive as well. I just find Facebook more suitable for my needs and likes. I would say that LinkedlN would be the best though if I decided to use one of the sites for professional reasons only.

Importance of Social Networking for Engineers

With the recent change in licensure requirements for professional engineers, training has become an extremely important topic. Training in the past consisted of having a session held at a special place at a special time. Sometimes with busy work schedules and personal life commitments gaining PDH's can be cumbersome. Furthermore, some training programs that are set up by non-engineers within your organization can be ineffective or useless. Social networking programs can change the way people learn because learning can happen all of the time. Engineers can use these social programs to connect with people that can lead them to more effective training programs that can be useful with various time constraints.

Furthermore, a rich social network makes it possible to move from knowledge sharing to collective knowing. Social networks improve how you will communicate. This allows one to process information exchanged, quantitatively and qualitatively. This gives a person time to reflect and process what is learned thus resulting in the improvement of thinking skills.

Finally, groups of engineers can use online social networks to think together in new ways. When a common goal or interest shared, the group is strong enough, mastery of group communication media leads to people to invent things together in new ways. A good online social network can identify when that kind of opportunity is possible, and can bring the right people together with right tools to make productive knowledge transfer possible.

Conclusion (Everyone can leave their own opinion here on what they prefer to use going forward)

Written by Chris Allen:

My social networking needs as a part-time student and full time engineer can be easily fulfilled with Facebook. With Facebook, I can easily search out people who are interested in the same things that I am, I can add useful applications, and still see what other are doing. NING is good for purposes of conducting a class or participating in a large network collaboration, but I really think it is a bit too much for everyday (typically leisure) use by someone such as myself. Facebok is simple and easy to use; one really doesn't need to go through any kind of demo or explanation before joining and participating. Linkedin, Powence, and Friendfeed are all pretty good forms of SNS and I can see myself using them, but they just are not popular with the people I keep in contact with; Twitter is about 5 years too late in my book. Right now, my network is either on MySpace or Facebook, and most of them are migrating away from MySpace and onto Facebook. With that, I have to say that I am using Facebook going forward. This could very well change as new apps hit the market, but for now, I am a supporter of Facebook.

Written by Dimitrios Hazimihalis:

Going forward, I will probably focus on two programs for social networking. I will use Facebook and LinkedIN. The Facebook site I will use for more personal interests. The LinkedIn site will be used for my professional interests. I already have found a couple of interesting leads on LinkedIn for my professional career so I will definately stick to that one. I noticed that Dr. Alam likes Freindfeed, so I will continue to try to use this newtork as well but not as much as the other two. I realize that I am a sub-novice when it comes to social newtorking, however I believe that in time I will be able to use these programs to be able to keep up with current trends.

Written by Snezana Aleksic:

I was not a Facebook user before, but through using it for this course I realized that some good options/features are offered. I will use it in order to stay in touch with my friends, considering that some of them live overseas and that is an excellent way to stay in touch. I also like features offered by Ning, and I would like to use it in the future. LinkedIn is my choice for the future also, since I can share my professional information with other users in order to find job, people or business opportunities.

Written by Dan Martin

I find learning about Social Network Services somewhat interesting. I never realized how many different networks are out there such as Ning, Facebook, LinkedIn…etc. I’ve joined so many new sites lately that it’s a challenge keeping track of them all. I’ve been using the internet for many years now but I can honestly say that I never really understood the relationship between URL’s, WWW, and http and everything else that come with accessing information on the internet. The thing that fascinates me the most is just how powerful the internet and all its’ tools really are. Google, for example, seems to continuously amaze me as to the capabilities. There so much to do and learning using all these Social Networking Services that I’m sure that I haven’t broken the surface yet. With access to all these tools, it would not be so far fetched to one day work from the comfort of my own home, a virtual office of sorts. At this point, there is nothing I cannot do from home that I can do in the office besides of course the face-to-face interaction.

Written by Hadi El-Chammas:

I think the whole purpose of social networking is to connect with as many of your friends and create a bigger community to interact and stay in touch. The most important quality in a social networking software is "Popularity".

In my opinion, Facebook today is the most popular of these softwares we are discussing here in this study. Other softwares such as Friendfeed might be more powerful or more advanced, but i am going to keep using Facebook where i can connect with most of my friends.

Written by NAVEEN GENTE:

In my conclusion I still would like to go with NING, it may be due to the ease of use, my personal usage level between facebook and NING or some other reason like I don’t have much friends on facebook etc. In the near future I’ll use linkedin, as it is a good option for professional life. Though facebook has some good options, it is a bit confusing for me, so I’ll stick to NING.

Written by Bryan Gall:

In conclusion I will continue to use Facebook in the near future since I am used to it and like its features. I also know much more people that use Facebook. Things can change in the future, but for now that is my choice.

References

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118194536298737221.html This is an article from “The Wall Street Journal” written on June 18, 2007 by William M. Bulkeley, titled: “Playing Well With Others”. The article talks about how IBM workers started registering blogs on their company's internal computer network where they discuss work related topics. Then every time the employees started a new project, they kept added new information to the web pages routinely.

It is good that you found this many references but you also need to provide a brief description about what these url refer to. may be 2-3 lines at the most???--------i added some description about the urls--looja

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118194536298737221.html This is an article from "The Wall Street Journal" written on June 18, 2007 by William M. Bulkeley, titled: "Playing Well With Others". The article talks about how IBM workers started registering blogs on their company's internal computer network where they discuss work related topics. Then every time the employees started a new project, they kept added new information to the web pages routinely.

http://infotechtools.ning.com/video/video/show?id=2002853%3AVideo%3A3628

This video describes how networks allow people to be connected to each other and how to use networks to get things done.

http://infotechtools.ning.com/video/video/show?id=2002853%3AVideo%3A4013

This reference how to use social networks to use time more efficiently.

http://infotechtools.ning.com/video/video/show?id=2002853%3AVideo%3A3860

This video describes how networks help people share, communicate and interact.

http://infotechtools.ning.com/video/video/show?id=2002853%3AVideo%3A3057

This video describes how networks build groups and how large amounts of work can get done from networking. Share knowledge!

http://infotechtools.ning.com/video/video/show?id=2002853%3AVideo%3A3042

This video makes understanding networks easy. Start network, email is going out. Wiki – better coordination.

http://infotechtools.ning.com/video/video/show?id=2002853%3AVideo%3A3637

This video describes the features of FriendFeed.

http://infotechtools.ning.com/video/video/show?id=2002853%3AVideo%3A3147

This post discusses video networking and conferencing. It's mostly in introduction video.

http://infotechtools.ning.com/video/video/show?id=2002853%3AVideo%3A3622

This video discusses the benefits of Google docs. Stop email and start sharing and collaborating online.

Detailed explanation for the RSS feed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_networking

This gives us the information about the social networking.

Here you can read about the history of social network services, Research on the social impact of social networking software Business applications Medical applications Social networks for social good, typical structure of a social networking service etc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

This Link provides us the list of popular social networking websites with its urls. These sites have their own Wikipedia page. It also gives the description of the sites and its registration status.

http://www.social-whamx.com

This is the website for Social Bookmarking Training Center. Here we can fing various posting of many

new social bookmarking training videos, tips, tricks and critical bookmarking information.

I also have references in LU 7 when I first started the topic of SN from Wikipedia how about those refernces

Also, there are references about SN on the infotechtools group on facebook. How about those?

Please add those here too.

Detailed explanation for the RSS feed

http://www.mitchelaneous.com/2007/08/03/facebook-importing-a-rss-feed-as-notes/

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.................................This is the document that will be used to write the report about social networking software..............................

Written by Jon Unger on 4-9-08

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Written by Leby Sassya on 4-10-08...

We have been learning about networking all of our lives, in this class we learned how to network socially like people networking. We have been learning to network for different purposes driving direction and what is connected to what, or postal services they network through receiving and delivering the mail for you and many other examples. now with the websites we have been working with, we learned not only to network with friends and families but also with friends of friends which opens up a lot of potentials for us, for jobs, new friends or partners.= o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />= O />

I was introduced to FaceBook a while back, I did not interact with this program very much, until I discovered all what it provides “for free”; and the ability to communicate back and forth between users, it distinguishes it from Pownce and FriendFeed, on the other hand Twitter allows you to text people to keep up to date, Ning is more GUI based than FaceBook but they almost provide the same capabilities, I also like the fact I can see most of the activities of my friends have so I do not feel left behind with my busy schedule. LinkedIn seems to be more on the professional level since most of the HR I have met i found them on LinkedIn, similarly I found that Pownce and FriendFeed are not used for personal needs but for networking socially on a higher level.

Good

Title: Social Netwoking (Software Comparison)

Abstract: Social networking sites thrive on energetic social interaction, while peolpe are the one who uses it, it conforms to their needs; in a way they took part in building those software; simply it takes both sides to accomplish a successfull programs. This documents discuss and select the best Social Networking Software or Model for Engineers

Introduction

History: The movement of social networking on the web initiated with people wanting to reconnect with classmates. Later on, it developed into sharing messages, music, and videos, extending to sharing cultures. Hadi

Types of Software

FriendFeed

Twitter

Flickr

Blog

Scribd

picasaweb Leby, Dr. Alam am I correct on the software list that we used so far, if yes i will delete the red words

Comparison within software available today

Personal Experience w/ SNS (Everyone to contribute something from their own experience(s))

Conclusion (Everyone can leave their own opinion here on what they prefer to use going forward)

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Written by Dimitrios Hazimihalis on 4-11-08...

Importance of Social Networking for Engineers

Online social networks are webs of relationships that grow from computer-mediated discussions. The webs grow from conversations among people who share a common interest and who differ in other ways. Social networks grow from the personal interactions of human beings over time, as well as from the technological infrastructure that connects those humans.

Social software can be described as the application and services that enable such participatory, collaborative activity via the Internet. Social groups create a virtual space for engineers to post their technology-related questions, experiences, tips, tricks and advice for the field.

Although there are numerous benefits to Social Networking I have narrowed the list down to a few. Social networks can benefit engineers by:

Knowledge Exchange

Increase In Innovation

Improvement of Collective Thinking

Training

Knowledge Exchange

A social network can provide a venue for showcasing projects and best practices that can be used to create new knowledge resources. The opportunity to meet others working on similar issues or projects creates relationships that can shortcut the important process of figuring out where to get help for particular problems.

Increase In Innovation

Groups of people can use online social networks to think together in new ways. When a common goal or interest shared by the group is strong enough, mastery of group communication media leads to people to invent things together in new ways. A good online social network can identify when that kind of opportunity is possible, and can bring the right people together with right tools to make productive knowledge transfer possible.

Improvement of Collective Thinking

A rich social network makes it possible to move from knowledge sharing to collective knowing. Social networks improve how you will communicate. This allows one to process information exchanged, quantitatively and qualitatively. This gives a person time to reflect and process what is learned thus resulting in the improvement of thinking skills.

Training

With the recent change in licensure requirements for professional engineers, training has become an extremely important topic. Training in the past consisted of having a session held at a special place at a special time. Sometimes with busy work schedules and personal life commitments gaining PDH’s can be cumbersome. Furthermore, some training programs that are set up by non-engineers within your organization can be ineffective or useless. Social networking programs can change the way people learn because learning can happen all of the time. Engineers can use these social programs to connect with people that can lead them to more effective training programs that can be useful with various time constraints.

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Written by Jacob Guidosh on 4-11-08

Facebook ( http://www.facebook.com/ ):

Facebook is a growing social networking site that has grown to be one of the biggest social networking sites on the internet. Facebook allows users to create a profile page, which is the primary area of interaction between people using the service. Users connect to one another by becoming "friends" through the website, from here the users have the ability to fully view the profile pages of their friends. One of Facebook's biggest advantages is the amount of people that are currently using it, this popularity means that it will be very easy to find people or groups that are of interest to you in one way or another.

Ning ( http://www.ning.com/ ):

Ning is an interesting service that essentially allows you to create your own social networking site. By creating a site and adding friends you start to create a social network based around a certain idea that your Ning site focuses on. For example, YSU's ENGR 6923 has a site that started out with only students and the professor being members. Shortly after the conception of the site the population increased to include many other members that are not directly enrolled in the class, but interested in the subject material. This networking added new information to all parties involved and enriched everyone through mutual cooperation and sharing of information.

LinkedIN ( http://www.linkedin.com/ ):

LinkedIN is another important social networking site that focuses on professional networking. Creating a LinkedIN profile allows companies to view a page that tells as much about your career as you want. LinkedIN also allows you to join professional groups that can help you in obtaining work or keeping you abreast of current developments in your field. LinkedIN offers a more professional and business like format, and is a great resource to keep a professional profile upon.

Pownce ( http://pownce.com/ ):

Pownce is version of social networking that relies upon messaging between friends. It allows you to send messages, pictures and the like to friends that you've made through the service. Pownce also allows users to mark and link profiles from other internet services like blogs, flickr, LinkedIN and others.

FriendFeed ( http://friendfeed.com/ ):

The best way for me to describe FriendFeed is to compare it to an RSS feed. You start by networking with friends and adding social applications to FriendFeed, once all of your applications are added to FriendFeed your friends will be able to keep track of any new developments that relate to you in the added applications. The opposite is also true, once your friends add their social applications to the site you'll be able to keep track of their activities on those sites.

Twitter ( http://twitter.com// ):

Twitter is essentially a mass instant messaging service. It allows a person to post a short message, which is then delivered to everyone on that person's Twitter friend list. Hyperlinks can be texted across the service, but the tool is limited to sending text to friends.

Written by Bryan Gall 4-13-08

We have used several different forms of social networking software in the class. These include Facebook, Ning, LinkedlN, Pownce, Friendfeed, and Twitter. Let me first say that I believe social networking software has become a great social tool. It has become one the best and easiest ways to communicate with others in this new fast paced world. It has given us the opportunity to communicate with each other without being able to communicate at the same time.

I have been a member of Facebook for several years now and have enjoyed my experience with it. I am able to connect with many of my friends by using it. When it started, there wasn’t much to it. It was for college students only and it didn’t have all of the applications you see with it today. Users could have all the same profile information they can provide today and there were always plenty of groups created by users. It was mainly used to communicate with friends online. Now, it has blossomed to where just about anybody can join and a vast amount of applications have been added that cover a wide variety of things. There isn’t much you can’t find using Facebook. It has still not lost its ease of use to communicate with friends since it has become so hugely popular.

My first experience with Ning came in this class. I have found this to be a very good tool. It works very well for the purpose we have used it. We can communicate as a whole to the class in specific forums dedicated to certain tasks. We can also make our personal profile, post blogs, and communicate directly to one another on our walls just like Facebook. I have found this as a very useful group tool.

I also am new to LinkedlN. I also think that this is a very useful tool. Whereas I believe Facebook is a great tool for personal use with friends, I believe that LinkedlN is a great tool for professional use. The software itself is set up to look professional in nature. It is set up for you to have a nice outline of your schooling and professional experience. You can get connected to current and past classmates and colleagues on it. It can be used to link your professional past, present and future.

Pownce is nice in that you can have links to all of the other sites you are a part of, but it lacks the application availability of Facebook, as well as the amount of users. It also doesn’t give the availability of having a large profile for yourself. This is another site that I was not familiar with before the class.

Friendfeed Is yet another site that I had never heard of before. What I like about it is that friends can see the activity you have had using other programs. Other than this, there is not much to it.

Twitter allows users to post what they are currently doing or about to do. This is something that is available to do on other sites such as Facebook, but would just be a small aspect of it.

In my personal opinion after working with all of these sites, I’d have to say I easily like Facebook the most. I also like Ning and LinkedlN. I don’t feel as if the other sites will benefit be too much in the future. The reason I like Facebook the most is for a variety of reasons. First, it is easy to use. Also, it offers a lot more capability. It also has many more users to communicate with. Just about everyone I know has a Facebook account. Another site that hasn’t been mentioned is Myspace which most people I know also belong to. I don’t know anyone outside of this class that uses any of the other software we have examined. As I said before I also like Ning for the purpose of group work and LinkedlN for professional reasons. I think I will have a use for these three in the future.