The Contribution of Informatics to the development of
Social networks and their impact on society.
Informatics, being a hub of technologies
has given rise to the evolution of social networks and their effective impact
on the society. Current World, Without Information technology would just be a
Void. Being in an era of social networks which is nothing but a creative
product of Informatics, I can proudly say that I am a Software Engineer.
The prime reason for 21st
century being driven by social networks and internet can only be the major
developments in Information Technology or Informatics. There were exponential
developments in the field of Informatics in 21st century, which
included changes in several fields such as User Experience, IT delivery, Info
& Communication, Innovation and Usage model, and Data Storage. Having said
that, Attractive User Experience which mainly includes GUI s, touch UI,
next-gen mobile has proven to be the driving force for the people around the
world towards social networks. Data
centres, Cloud services, app stores, PCs’, Smart phones, Browsers and many
server side technologies such as Web
services which have made the access to social networks a cake walk, come under
the developments in IT delivery. E-mails, CMS/DMS, Social media have helped the
information and Communication department of Social networks to the peak extent.
Innovation and Usage models such as Enterprise, Consumer models and Business
Intelligence are a major part of Strategic developments of Social networks. Data
Storage which is nothing but a Backbone of Social networks has been a major
area of research in 21st century and hence lead to several Data
storage techniques to store huge Data and many innovative researches in Data
Mining have favoured Social networks in terms of data storage and hence have
helped them to maintain records of millions of users.
There were many evolutions in Programming
and Scripting languages which have eased the development of website in general.
New frameworks in UI side scripting, Such as JQuery which has techniques such
as Database maintenance at the UI side, are turning out to be of great use. Several
Frameworks such as GWT (Google Web development Toolkit), STRUTS, JSF, and
SPRING etc., have made the job of developers of Social network very easy were
developed. Programming languages such as JAVA, PHP, C#, etc have provided
multiple platforms for the user to come up with a social networking website and
hence not restricting the user to a particular programming platform. As a result
of significant development in terms of Distributed systems (for Ex new J2EE
concepts) which allow the development to be distributed in many places, Web
development in general has become easy and productive. The Client – Server
interaction which is a core part of any social network is being optimised and
there are new optimal techniques such as RMI are provided by informatics to
help the development of social networks.
As quoted by the great Philosopher Aristotle,
“Man is by nature a social animal”. For
the current world, it will turn out to be as “Man is a social network animal by nature”. Nowadays, people
interact more through social networks than in persona and are also more
comfortable and happy being connected through Social networks. It will not be
wrong if we say, Social networking has created a Virtual world where likeminded
people exchange their thoughts and stay connected. For the Family members and
Friends which stay at distant places from each other, Social networks act as
channel to stay in touch and to keep each other Updated about the happenings
which occur in each other’s life.
There
are several other perspectives for people being connected through social
networks. Which includes exchange of knowledge or daily affairs that occur in
the society such as Sports, Politics, technology, Fashion, Films etc., the
affection of people of opposite sex, and nowadays even corporate strategy is to
find employees through social networks. It will not be wrong if we say that, few
people are so obsessed by Social networks that they are even ready to
compromise their daily routine for accessing Social networks. Social networks
(for ex Facebook, Twitter) are mainly designed to suit the human psychology and
the way people like to interact with each other. The features such as like,
comment, posts and photo sharing have completely jelled with the people‘s
desires and hence have attracted millions of users.
There are several Social networks which are
famous around different parts of the World. American-based services Facebook, Google+, and Twitter widely
used worldwide; Nexopia
in Canada;[1]
Badoo,[2]
Bebo,[3]
VKontakte,
Draugiem.lv
(mostly in Latvia), Hi5, Hyves (mostly in The Netherlands), iWiW (mostly in
Hungary), Nasza-Klasa (mostly in Poland), Skyrock, The Sphere, StudiVZ (mostly
in Germany), Tagged,
Tuenti (mostly
in Spain), and XING[4]
in parts of Europe;[5]
Hi5
and Orkut in South
America and Central America;[6]
LAGbook in Africa;[7]
and Cyworld, Mixi, Orkut, renren, weibo and Wretch
in Asia and the Pacific Islands (WikiPedia), indicating that the whole World
has transformed into a phase where social networking has become a Worldwide
business and hence giving rise to a new market for creative people to earn
money , needless to mention the achievements
of people like Mark Zukkerberg (Founder of Facebook.com) .
Studies indicate that social networking has
a positive Impact on social connectedness and wellbeing (Valkenburg &
Peter, 2009; Ofcom, 2008). However, negatives are more evident (Cross et al.,
2009), with much media attention focused on the ‘dangers’ of online social
networking such as bullying and inappropriate use of personal information. As per
the survey conducted by APS (Australian Psychological Society),
- Online social networking is
being used by people across the age range
- 70% of survey respondents
report spending less than two hours a day on sites
- 28% have had a ‘bad experience’
using social networking sites
- 53% feel social networking has
increased contact with friends and family
- 26% report increased
participation in social activities as a result
- Patterns of ‘sociability’ that
occur in real life appear to be replicated online
- 25% of 31–50 year old
respondents have had a date with someone met online
- 21% of these have gone on to
form an intimate relationship
In
conclusion, Informatics can be treated as a Backbone of Social networks with
enormous amount of supporting technologies and tools which have given to
evolution of the world of Social networks. There are still many technologies
being developed to support Social networking. On the other hand, there is a huge impact of
Social networks on the current society in both positive and negative ways. Social
Networking is turning out to be a market place for the creative folks to earn
money and is turning out to be a major competitive area for big companies such
as Google etc.
References:
·
http://en.wikipedia.org
·
http://www.psychology.org.au/publications/inpsych/2010/december/social/
·
Cross, D. et al. (2009). Australian covert bullying
prevalence study. Perth: Edith Cowan University.
·
Ofcom. (2008). Social networking: A quantitative
and qualitative research report into attitudes, behaviours and use. Retrieved 28/10/10 from
stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/media-literacy/ report1.pdf
·
Valkenburg, P. M. & Peter, J. (2009). Social consequences of
the internet for adolescents: A decade of research. Current
Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 1-5.