Blog Social Networking

Social Networking is used by people to keep in contact with friends, employers to get personal insight on potential employees, customers to decide whether or not to buy/consume a product or service and companies to try to better their products or services to tailor the need of the customers. Some of the benefits come from customer reviews, whether it be on movies, food or a product. Many consumers look at the reviews in order to help them make what they believe to be the right choice. In an MIT Technology Review article by Kristina Grifantini Can You Trust Crowd Wisdom?, Grifantini quotes Vassilis Kostakos an assistant professor at University of Madeira in Portugal and an adjunct assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University who says that rating systems can tap into the "wisdom of the crowd". However the study of reviews on Amazon, IMBd (Internet Movie Database) and BookCrossings by Kostakos show that people have different voting patterns and that the data could be skewed. The study showed that in all cases a small number of users made most of the reviews. Thus it doesn't justly show the idea or opinion of the majority.

In the NPR article by Frank Langfitt Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting, Langfitt talks about how recruiters are finding it easier to find potential employees by checking on theses social networking sites. The more popular site for job recruiters seems to be LinkedIn because it not only connects a person with people they may have encountered but also with the contacts of their contacts so the bigger the person's network the bigger their potential network is.

Te benefits of these Social network technologies is that they allow contact with many people with less effort and with more time efficiency. The amount of connection one can make at one time is immensely more than one could make with just meeting up in person and contacting through the phone. This could also help people that would not meet otherwise meet. There is a "dark side" however and its when it comes to privacy. Although many of theses sites have settings to control what information you put out it still is not full proof. So on a social networking site where you likely would be more open about your personal life perhaps a recruiter who uses that sites could see and disqualify you based on what they saw or even a boss could see and potential demote or fire you.

In the future seems these technologies will become more personal. The privacy features also might be less. This would make it blatantly okay for a company to fire or not hire people.