Social Networking is the act of interacting and networking with others in a social online environment via the use of a website. Social networking is very popular between teenagers and people in the working age group. Some of the most popular social networking websites are Facebook, hi-fi, MySpace, Google Plus etc.
Social networking websites helps people share their information, picture and video along with their friends and families. It provides a common platform to people living far away from each other. This type of networking allows users to virtually connect with each other. All you have to do is open an account on any popular site such as Facebook, create your profile and find your friends. You can even make new friends.
Following are the advantages of using a social networking:-
It helps you keeping in touch with your family and friends. You might not be in touch with your friends for many years, when you join a social networking site and find about your friend, what he is doing and watch his pictures and videos your happiness will reach is height. It helps in both connections with a new friend and reconnection with an old friend.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Interacting with people online helps you gain confidence; it also increases your knowledge when you share information with others.
It is the cheapest way to connect with your closed one. You can even have a video chat which not only makes you feel as if the person is right there in front of you, it also reduces your loneliness.
It is not only advantageous on personal level, but it provides great value on professional level also. It is a great advertising media. And also helps you to connect directly with your existing and potential customers. The feedback of your customer can provide valuable information for your business.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
It helps in building credibility. You can easily gain the confidence of your customer if you’re connected to them both professionally and personally.
It is making people more tech-savvy. One becomes more familiar with new and emerging technologies, it also promotes literacy
Some of the notable disadvantages of social networking are:-
By the way of social networking websites you are letting you information out to the entire world. One should be careful before sharing location, gender, name, age, picture and other types of information that you may not want to let others know.
Social networking sites increases the chances of cyber-stalking, virus attacks and online scams.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
It is time consuming especially in case of online advertising, one has to respond back to customers reply within a reasonable time, plus any negative comment about the company by customers may harm the image of the company.
People invest more time on developing relations online rather than focusing on those who are physically present. High usage of social networking site makes a person emotional. Any abusive comment on your profile may even break your personality.
In this information age social networking has become an important part of our life. It is hard to isolate yourself completely from online networking.