Social Networking

For survival it is necessary for every individual to live in a society as no one can live in isolation. Society provides us security, exposure and plays a key role in overall development of an individual. From the very past times, this concept of society is prevailing in the world. Earlier Indus valley civilization, Nile valley civilization and many more other sophisticated and well maintained societies had given birth to the society concept. With time, this society concept is accepted every where in the world. Creating our own social network in this highly modern society is necessary for every human being.

With the advancement in the internet facilities, social networking has become so easy and simple. Gone are the days when can not contact with any other person living at another end of the world. The highly advance internet system has made it easy for everyone to be in touch with their near and dear ones, without any fear of long distance. The Internet is the best medium available to users where they can make their own social networks effectively and can easily communicate with his friends fro worldwide. In this workaholic world, Internet has simplified our problems to a great extent.

Nowadays many social networking websites have evolved, which are the fastest and the most interesting medium to make worldwide networks. Through these amazing networking websites every one in this world can remain in touch with outer world and is able to communicate more excitingly with other persons residing at any end of this vast world. Some of the social networking websites at present are Orkut, Facebook and My space, which have become highly popular among users. These websites are the best medium to remain in touch with the whole world for business as well as personal purpose. Lots of people have accepted these websites for social networking and have made important contacts worldwide for different important purposes. This concept has gained so much popularity that almost every one has embraced this highly innovative concept of making effective and everlasting social contacts with the outer world.

With time and demand for new social networking websites, many other interesting websites have also come up, to provide more excellent communicating services to its users. Through these unique mediums of networking one can not only take advantage of sending SMS but can also make PC to PC call. This is the most lovely and popular service which has helped users to communicate more effectively with their loved ones. Besides this, various social networking websites also provide you with the amazing facility of sending instant messages to any mobile number of any countries that too at very affordable rates or even many times free of cost also.

Besides this you can also share your favourite videos and pictures with your Internet friends through these effective networking sites. It also let users to join many communities of their favourite choice, where you can give your opinions and thoughts and can also share views with other persons. All these fantastic and amazing facilities have made these websites very famous among customers through out the world.

Making a social network with outer world is not a tough job nowadays because of these highly advance and efficient websites, which allow users to create their accounts to remain in touch with their friends from every part of the world.



By: Nisha Garg

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Baby Boomer Social Network Catches Fire—2900% Growth

Lifesmine.com, considered by many to be the fastest growing social network of its kind, has recently been experiencing explosive growth as more and more people over 40 years of age are catching onto the hottest trend on the internet–social networking. In just the past few weeks, Lifesmine’s internet reach, as tracked by Alexa a subsidiary of Amazon.com, has grown by 2900%. While growth is slowing at most top Internet sites, it is skyrocketing at sites focused on social networking, blogging and local information.

The dramatic success of those Internet categories is apparent from a recent online-traffic analysis provided by market research firm ComScore Media Metrix, which examined visitor growth rates among the 50 top Web sites over the past year. As of December 2006, it was a busy month for social networks across the board. In September, one in 20 U.S. Internet visits included a stop at a leading social network, almost twice the rate of a year before.

Lifesmine’s (www.lifesmine.com) phenomenal growth is even more impressive when compared with many of the social network industry leaders. The five fastest growing social networks, other than Lifesmine, identified during a recent tracking period include Bolt (271%), Bebo (95%), Orkut (63%), MySpace (51%), and Gaia Online (41%). In an industry where high growth is the rule, Lifesmine.com’s expansion dwarfs all the others.

The recent success of Lifesmine is also important considering what a recent national analyst said about the social network business model in general. “In order for a social networking site to be successful, it must attain a critical mass, and competition is fierce to attract new member,.” said Jill Meyers, an Analyst with In-Stat. “So far, sites have focused their attention on a younger demographic, which is finite, fickle and limited in expendable income,” she added. Recent In-Stat research finds that the biggest American generation, the baby boomers, is frequently overlooked.

Baby Boomers are one of the two age groups that Lifesmine CEO Larry Lutvak has focused on in terms of his efforts to build a strong company. “We know that adults from 40-60 years old are in the midst of an entertainment transition,” stated Lutvak from his Tampa Bay area offices. “High speed bandwidth and cheaper computer costs are driving internet usage and more and more people are choosing social networking as a way to meet new people and spend their time,” he added.

Lutvak also cited the recent strategic adjustments by Facebook as regards their renewed focus on the 35 and up marketplace. “We could see that advertisers wanted to see an evolution in social networking towards more mature age groups”, said Lutvak.

Observers have lauded Facebook for attracting an increasing number of business and professional users and more consumers in the 35-plus age categories than is usual for networking sites, which often skew younger. All this should mean growing advertising revenue for the site.

Industry experts have also said a broader base of investors seems ready to embrace social networks, citing as evidence the networks’ rapid growth and funding rounds by venture firms and rich individuals. A recent case in point: the $40 million raised by Ning, an online service that allows consumers to create their own social network “for free in seconds,” according to its Web site. Netscape pioneer Marc Andreessen is one of its co-founders.

All of this bodes well for Lifesmine.com provided they continue to grow rapidly. The company is using a combination of Google pay par click advertising and consumer generated online publicity to add new subscribers. With general internet user trends pointing to continued growth of internet penetration by Baby Boomer, Lifesmine.com is poised to enjoy even more growth.

Robert Cefail

Editor-In-Chief

Press Direct International



By: Robert Cefail

About the Author:

The spyware, virus attacks, worms, SPAM are the issues no more only linked to your PC usage, but they have lots of doing with your social networking habits also. The security issues once raised only for PCs can now be more vigorously asked for social networking habits. These sites are indispensable to youths of today but they are just invites for additional work at your part.

This feature will list some of the major annoyances or irritations that this virtual network of friends via social networking sites can lead you to:

The biggest annoyance linked to social networking is crawling of worms. The users hogged social networking fundaa as salvage from the virus attacks on e-mail boxes. But to their knowledge, worms crawl in. Yes, the social networking sites are also hit by the attacks and the havoc is more widespread. For instance, a highly rated worm attack was registered on Orkut (social networking site form Google) in 2006 which propagates as an image file to other users profile stealing their personal data. The scenario is more or less same on each social networking site. The issue needs immediate addressing but contrary to that more worms are written to repeat the same havoc.

The concept of mobile social networking enabling real time, location based messages is rooting up but still slow to steal the focus. Many sites like Facebook, or MySpace are moving to add mobile phone features but are still weak. The concept is no fun with lots of technical requirements. It needs multiple wireless carriers and social networks. The GPS enabled phones give you this option but people find calling easier.

The people generally flock on social networking sites as they allow you to create a social circle with friends that have lost after school or college. But the irritating part with these sites is the continuous pouring of messages from the unknown persons. The option is with you, you can deny the request but irritation is what some feels. It can also be considered as a toll on your privacy.

The more irritating than friend requests is the arrival of SPAM messages in your inbox. People have really hopped on new idea of social networking as a way to advertise their business. On many of the well reputed social networking sites, you can see the commercial advertisements running by side which can really cost on your storage space. The meaning is simple this new kid can invite the traditional SPAM on your email message.

Adding to all these annoyances the big one is – cancellation not easy. While registering with these sites is easy (or seems easy as allows you to join lost friend circle), canceling your registration is no kid game. It is not easy as clicking on Delete button and things done. You must need to go through cancellation process or some more other hefty procedures.

With these much of annoyances linked to social networking sites, people are really getting adhere to the phenomenon. And the most positive thing about the concept is that biggies involved know its bringing together online not walling.

Renu Singh, ITVoir Network

For more info visit the link :www.itvoir.com



By: renu singh

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Employees use two types of social networking sites. They bring their Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and other identities to the office. At the same time, they use professional social networking – LinkedIn and others – for more “official” duties.

It has the potential to be a major problem. This Newsfactor piece based on Forrester research identifies social networking as a key element of the ongoing corporate Web 2.0 wave. By 2013, the firm says, social networks will constitute a $2 billion chunk of what will be a $4.6 billion sector.

Hopefully, organizations will catch up on the security front. The piece says that only half of Web filters deployed by Barracuda Networks are blocking MySpace or Facebook. Those who are doing so are trying to guard against virus and spyware and to maintain employee productivity. It would be interesting to understand how many of these organizations understand that social networking sites are great avenues for phishing and other social engineer exploits, and for dishonest or ignorant employees to send vital information beyond the firewall.

This is a nice CNN overview of the flow of social networking into the corporate space. What the author doesn’t say is that the evolution of social networking from consumer to business use is precisely what happened with cell phones, Wi-Fi and other tools: People used them in their private lives, liked them, and brought them to work. In this case, the writer says, more secure, corporate-aimed offerings are available. Yammer, for instance, is a business version of Twitter. Other corporate social networking newbies, according to Forrester, include Awareness, Communispace and Jive.

One of the advantages of the fact that new technology has moved from the consumer to business world so many times in the recent past is that experts consider the security issues more quickly. There seems to be a bit less denial. This Legal Technology piece offers a good description of social networks, and references a Black Hat presentation that looked at insecure features of social networks and identified the biggest vulnerabilities. They include cross-site request forgery (CSRF), cross-site scripting (XSS) and the lack of a mechanism to validate the security of customer applications. The writer offers seven tips for safely using and administering social networks.

This is not all theoretic: Business people are using social networks – and the bad guys are going after them. For instance, SPAMfighter cites reports from The Washington Post’s Brian Krebs about spear phishing attacks against about 10,000 LinkedIn members. The story says social networking sites often are the target of spear phishers because users are used to getting e-mail from other members. This e-mail purported to come from support@linkedin.com and carried the subject line “Re: business contacts.” Recipients following the instructions in the e-mail installed a malicious program aimed at stealing sensitive information from the computer.

There is a lot to worry about. Dark Reading offers a scary vignette on how dangerous a social networking site can be. The big problem is that there is no way to simultaneously optimize security and interactivity. To a great extent, emphasizing one comes at the expense of the other. Dark Reading runs through some of the problems, and links to pages that describe in more detail seven of the most dangerous activities: impersonation and targeted hacks; spam and bots; “weaponized” applications; XSS and CSRF; identity theft and corporate espionage.



By: Carl Weinschenk

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