UNIDAD EDUCATIVA JAVIER

SOCIAL MEDIA

Students name
Nicols Arango

Teachers name
Msc. Pedro Salcedo

English

Course

3rd baccalaureate B Advanced

2013 - 2014

INDEX
I) Introduction........................................................................................................................1
II) What social media is.........................................................................................................1
III) History of social media...................................................................................................2
1. The early years.............................................................................................................2
2. The birth of social media as we know it......................................................................3
IV) Types of social media..................................................................................3
1. Social interactions........................................................................................................3
1.1.
Facebook...............................................................................................................3
1.2.
Google
Plus...........................................................................................................4
2. Media Sharing..............................................................................................................5
2.1.
YouTube...............................................................................................................5
2.2.
Instagram..............................................................................................................5
3. Microblogging.............................................................................................................6
Twitter.......................................................................................................6
V) Uses of social media.........................................................................................................6
1. Personal reasons..........................................................................................................6
2. Business.......................................................................................................................6
2.1.
Connecting with
customers..................................................................................6
2.2.
Networking...........................................................................................................7
3. Marketing.....................................................................................................................7
4. Entertainment...............................................................................................................7
VI) Benefits of using social media.........................................................................................7
1. Bringing people together.............................................................................................7
2. Breadth of knowledge..................................................................................................8
3. Opportunity to widen business....................................................................................8
VII) The dangers of social media..........................................................................................8
1. Invasion of privacy......................................................................................................8
2. Addiction.....................................................................................................................9
VIII) Conclusions and recommendations..............................................................................9
IX) Annexations...................................................................................................................10
X) Bibliography....................................................................................................................13

Name: Nicols Arango

Teacher: Pedro Salcedo
Course: 6 B Advanced
Date: 21/08/2013

SOCIAL MEDIA
I) INTRODUCTION
Just as the Internet has changed the way people watch movies, buy things, organize
vacations, and research a lot of information, it has also affected how they interact socially.
Through the use of social media, people can exchange photos and videos, share news
stories, post their thoughts on blogs, and participate in online discussions. They make it
easier for people to find and communicate with individuals who are in their networks using
the Web as the interface.

Social media also allows individuals, companies, organizations, governments, etc. to

interact with large numbers of people and stay in touch with them wherever they are. In
conjunction with the increase in online activity, there are concerns about the ways in which
the personal information that is shared by social media users may be collected
and analyzed because it could be used for an identity theft or other things that would harm
the user.

There are several different social media services nowadays, but for our purposes, this essay
will focus on the ones that tend to be used the most by people all around the world. These
are: Facebook, Google Plus, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. Each of these networks has
its own unique style, functionality and patterns of usage. You will also find that different
people are active in these different networks, depending on the type of service that each
kind of social media offers which is different in every one of the social media services
mentioned before.

In this essay I will give an overview of the evolution and development of social media, its
origins, how it started and became what we know today, the most popular kind of social
media now, its advantages and disadvantages, looks at how their attributes affect the way
people interact online, and consider their potential social and economic impact.

II) WHAT SOCIAL MEDIA IS

The best way to define social media is to break it down. Media is an instrument on
communication, like a newspaper or a radio, so social media would be a social instrument
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of communication. The term social media refers to the wide range of Internet-based and
mobile services that allow users to participate in online exchanges, contribute user-created
content, or join online communities.

A social media service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on facilitating the
building of social networks or social relations among people who, for example, share
interests, activities, backgrounds, or real-life connections. A social media service consists
of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of
additional services.

Most social media services are web-based and provide means for users to interact over the
Internet, such as e-mail and instant messaging. Social networking sites allow users to share
ideas, activities, events, and interests within their individual networks.

Social Networking involves the use of the Internet to connect users with their friends,
family and acquaintances. Social networking websites are not necessarily about meeting
new people online, although this does happen. Instead, they are primarily about connecting
with friends, family and acquaintances you already have in real life.

Social media take on many different forms including magazines, Internet forums, weblogs,
social blogs, microblogging, wikis, social networks, podcasts, photographs or pictures,
video, rating and social bookmarking. Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs,
wall-postings, music-sharing, crowdsourcing and voice over IP, to name a few. Many of
these services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms.

III) HISTORY OF SOCIAL MEDIA

1. The early years
The use of social media began in 1978 with the Bulletin Board System. The BBS was
hosted on personal computers, requiring that users dial in through the modem of the host
computer, exchanging information over phone lines with other users.

This was the first system that allowed users to sign in and interact with each other,
although it was quite slow since only one user could be logged in at a time. Later in the
year, the very first copies of web browsers were distributed using the bulletin board
Usenet. Usenet was created by Jim Ellis and Tom Truscott, and it allowed users to post
news articles or posts, which were referred to as news. The difference between Usenet

and other BBS and forums was that it didnt have a dedicated administrator or central
server. There are modern forums that use the same idea as Usenet today, including Yahoo!
Groups and Google Groups.
The first version of instant messaging came about in 1988 with Internet Relay Chat (IRC).
IRC was Unix-based, limiting access to most people. It was used for link and file sharing,
and generally keeping in touch with one another.

This kind of social media later inspired a lot of instant messaging services like Windows
live messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and even Whatsapp.

2. The birth of Social Media as we know it

Geocities was among the first social networking sites on the Internet, launching its website
in 1994. Its intent was to allow users to create their own websites, dividing them into
cities based on the websites content.

In 1995, TheGlobe.com was launched, offering users the ability to interact with people
who held the same interests and publish their own content.

Two years later, in 1997, AOL Instant Messenger and SixDegrees.com were launched. This
was the year instant messaging became popular and it was the first time Internet users were
able to create a profile and friend each other.

Friendster was the pioneer of social networking. In its first three months, the social
networking website acquired 3 million users, amounting to 1 in 126 Internet users being
members at the time. Friendster served as the launching point for the widely popular
MySpace, who cloned Friendster and launched after just 10 days of coding.

In its first month, over half of the 19,500 students signed up. After gaining popularity,
Facebook opened its registration to non-college students, and in 2008, Facebook surpassed
MySpace as the leading social networking website. Social networking has come a long
way since 1978, and we will all witness its evolution for years to come, forever changing
the way people connect with one another.

IV) TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA

1. Social interactions
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1.1. Facebook
Facebook is the world's most popular social networking website. Originally designed for
college students, Facebook was created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg while he was enrolled
at Harvard University. Only students with an .Edu account could join Facebook during this
time. This new social network began gaining popularity very fast among students from
Harvard and later by other colleges.
By 2006, however, anyone over the age of 13 with a valid email address could join
Facebook. Today, Facebook is the world's largest social network and one of the most
influential media services, with over a billion users worldwide and the amount of users on
facebook gets bigger every day. It has helped people to communicate and stay in touch
with other for over 7 years now.

It makes it easy for you to connect and share with your family and friends online.
Facebook has even helped the web become more open and social. Users must register
before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users
as friends, exchange messages, and receive automatic notifications when they update their
profile.

Within each member's personal profile, there are several key networking components. The
most popular is arguably the Wall, which is essentially a virtual bulletin board. Messages
left on a member's Wall can be text, video or photos.

Another popular component is the virtual Photo Album. Photos can be uploaded from the
desktop or directly from a cell phone camera.

There is no limitation on quantity, but Facebook staff will remove inappropriate or

copyrighted images. Facebook offers a range of privacy options to its members. A member
can make all his communications visible to everyone, he can block specific connections or
he can keep all his communications private.

1.2. Google Plus

Google+ is a social networking service from Google. The idea is pretty similar to other
social networking services, but Google attempts to differentiate Google Plus by allowing
more transparency in who you share with and how you interact. It also integrates all
Google services and displays a new Google Plus menu bar on other Google services when
the user is logged into a Google account.

To join Google+ you need a Google account. The main page that appears when you sign in
consists of a stream of updates, conversations and shared content similar in many
respects to the Facebook news feed or Twitter stream.

When you add a contact to your Google+ account, you assign them to one or more
circles, which is a way of categorizing and organizing people. You can upload and
organize photos using Google Photos.
Since its launch in 2011, Google Plus has been gradually moving towards being one of the
most active social networks with hundreds of millions of people having active accounts.

2. Media sharing
2.1. YouTube
YouTube was designed and then released in 2005 by three previous employees of the
PayPal online payment service. Google then picked up on the wave of all the public
communications, and purchased the popular YouTube. The purchase price was 1.65 billion
dollars. After the first launch of YouTube, the public, simply by word of mouth, heard
about this great site, and started joining in.

YouTube is an online public communications site. The site allows for registered users to
upload and have available for the public their videos for viewing. Anyone who goes to the
site can view the videos that are posted on this site.

The videos are anything from beginner videos to more professional videos. You can put
just about anything you want on the YouTube site. You can also watch just about anything
on YouTube. There are some great videos out there on YouTube that are very interesting
and entertaining and will never be seen anywhere else.

2.2. Instagram
Instagram was launched in October 2010. The service rapidly gained popularity, with over
100 million active users as of April 2012.

Instagram is an online photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service that

enables its users to take pictures and videos, apply digital filters to them, and share them on
a variety of social networking services, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr.

On Instagram, you can follow other users' photo streams as they post them and you can be
followed back by those users (or other users) as well. When you decide to follow a user,
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that user's Instagram photos will appear in the feed. You can press "Like" on any photo to
let someone know that you admire their photography, or you can leave a comment. When
you take photos using the Instagram app, they will always appear in the feed of the users
who are following you.

Users can also browse through the "Explore" tab to find new users to follow and creative
photos to look at.

3. Microblogging
Twitter
Twitter is a social network and real-time communication service launched in 2006 and used
by millions of people and organizations to quickly share and discovers information.

Users can access the site via the web and mobile devices to exchange frequent bite-size
updates of information called 'tweets' which are messages of up to 140 characters long that
anyone can send or read. These messages or tweets are public by default and visible to all
those who are following the tweeter.

Twitter allows you to follow other users you are interested in so that you are able to see
their updates on your home page, which is an aggregated feed of all the accounts you are
following. Users share these tweets which are micro-bits of information that can contain
things like photos, videos, quotes, article links and more.

Each tweet can also have replies from other people creating real-time conversations around
hot topics, breaking news and interesting new content. The logo of twitter is a little blue
bird, which has changed a lot from 2006 to today.

V) USES OF SOCIAL MEDIA

1. Personal reasons
It is the most common use of Social Media sites, and the main reason for them existing in
the first place. The majority of people using Facebook or Twitter keep to the social label. It
is used for its original purpose to keep in touch with friends. One great way of taking
advantage of the personal side of social media services is keeping in touch with people
hundreds of miles away, maybe somebody who has gone travelling or moved to the other
side of the world. In the past it would have been impossible to keep in touch. Some people
will go on simply to update their status or view their friends statuses, or use it to connect
to people they have met or someone who shares the same interests.

2. Business
2.1. Connecting with customers
With the rise of Internet Marketing, social media is being embraced by businesses more
and more. Innovative ways of utilizing these tools by connecting directly with customers
are being found. Companies are seeing that the best way to conduct themselves online is to
speak to their customers directly using these social networking sites, Twitter being
especially useful for this. It increases the reputation of the company, gets them positive
reviews and shows that they really care about the customer. It also gives a human face to
the large corporation, meaning that customers or potential customers will feel much more
comfortable coming back.

2.2. Networking
There is also the opportunity for business types to network and expand their business on
the social networking platform. You could expand your business through old contacts as
well as new. Social networking sites like LinkedIn exist for this purpose; for people to
network within a business environment, it lets people connect. It could find you or your
business to find a new deal or could even help you find a new job.

3. Marketing
Social media marketing refers to the process of gaining website traffic or attention through
social media sites. Social media marketing programs usually center on efforts to create
content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share it with their social
networks. Social media has become a platform that is easily accessible to anyone with
Internet access. Increased communication for organizations and improved customer
service. Additionally, social media serves as a relatively inexpensive platform for
organizations to implement marketing campaigns.

4. Entertainment
People sometimes go on purely for entertainment purposes. Facebook is a prime example
of this, as many famous artists have been discovered through these sites. It also offers a
wide variety of games for all ages and has almost every genre in the gaming industry.
Music is also a big part, now people can just search for a song they like or discover new
music in social media sites like YouTube or Jango. Video streaming sites, such as YouTube,
are easily spread on social networking sites. One can easily find something interesting and
entertained to watch within a few minutes of navigating through a social media site.

VI) BENEFITS OF USING SOCIAL MEDIA

1. Bringing people together
Social media facilitates open communication and enhancing information discovery and
delivery. Everyone can find new people, meet their friends and communicate to their love
ones all over the world. When promoting campaigns and ideas, it allows people from the
different geographical location to express and share their views and meet in a single point
as well as promoting global products.

2. Breadth of knowledge
People can experience the broadness of knowledge and connectedness through social
media use. It is easier for them to know or find out different information or something
about almost anything in the world through a connected media.

For students, who are also engaged in various activities, it can give them the benefit of
being exposed to technology and be connected to a broader base of opinions and world
views through global connections. Social media provides tools for helping students to work
together to create their own meaning in work environments, social contexts and especially
academic subjects.

3. Opportunity to widen business

Implementing social media services in your business or company allows employees to
discuss and share ideas, ask questions, post news and share links but it minimizes the use
of money that would be used for advertising in more traditional ways like on a magazine or
billboard.

It also improves business reputation and creates a more competent and reliable business. It
gives you loyalty and long-term relations to with the customers, social media can help your
business to attract attention to your site, product or services.

VII) THE DANGERS OF SOCIAL MEDIA

1. Invasion of privacy
Social media sites vary in the levels of privacy offered. For some social networking sites
like Facebook, providing real names and other personal information is encouraged by the
site. This information usually consists of birth date, current address, and telephone number.
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Some sites also allow users to provide more information about themselves such as
interests, hobbies, favorite books or films, and even relationship status.

Social media services security and privacy issues result from the huge amounts of
information these sites process each day. Features that invite users to messages, invitations,
photos, open platform applications and other applications are often the avenues for others
to gain access to a user's private information. Our information is never truly save when
using social networks and it could be used against us. That is why most social networking
sites require users to agree to Terms of Use policy before they may use their services.

2. Addiction
Social networking addiction is a phrase sometimes used to refer to someone spending too
much time using Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media so much that it
interferes with other aspects of daily life. There is no official medical recognition of social
networking addiction as a disease or disorder. Still, the cluster of behaviors associated with
heavy or excessive use of social media has become the subject of much discussion and
research.

A social networking addict could be considered someone with a compulsion to use social
media to an excess, constantly checking Facebook status updates or stalking people's
profiles on Facebook, for example, for hours. Social media can be more addictive than
drugs.

VIII) CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

For a large growing number of people, social media provide a way of keeping in touch
with friends, relatives and communities. To stay always informed on the latest news and
events that are happening in your community or all around the world at all times, the
activity in social media services never stops.

Social media also allows companies, business, etc. to reach large numbers of people. This
helps the company to extend itself and reach a larger audience and also helps the customer
to stay in touch with the company and be updated about new products, special offers or
store locations. At the same time, social media services are changing the ways in which
people interact with others, although the full impact of these changes is not yet clear.

The implications of sharing personal information could be very dangerous to the users,
that is why when we are using a social network or registering into a new social media
service we should always be careful of what information we put online. We can never be
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sure if our information is completely save as it could be viewed by anyone around the
world and be used to harm us.

IX) ANNEXATIONS

Pic 1: The Bulletin Board System was the first program of social media

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Pic 2: Now there are over 400 social media sites on the Internet

Pic 3: Graphic that shows the amount of users registered on the different types of social
media

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Pic 4: The most popular social media sites in the world

Pic 5: Social media can help people to communicate with each other all around the world

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Pic 6: Statistic of why people use social media sites

XI) BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dewing, Michael. Current Publications: Information and Communications. Social

Media: An Introduction. N.p., 12 Nov. 2012. Web. 16 Aug. 2013.
<http://www.parl.gc.ca/content/lop/researchpublications/2010-03-e.htm>.

Elise Moreau. What Is Instagram? N.p., n.d. Web. 19

<http://webtrends.about.com/od/prof4/a/What-Is-Instagram-Wiki.htm>.

E.P.I.C. Social Networking Privacy. EPIC. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Aug. 2013.
<http://epic.org/privacy/socialnet/>.

Facebook 101. Goodwill Community Foundation, Inc., 2012. Web. 17 Aug. 2013.
<http://www.gcflearnfree.org/facebook101/1>.

Ian Collins. Uses for Social Networking. N.p., Feb. 2010. Web. 20 Aug. 2013.
<http://www.blogussion.com/general/uses-social-networking/>.

Introduction to Social Media. University of South Florida, n.d. Web. 20 Aug. 2013.
<http://www.usf.edu/ucm/marketing/intro-social-media.aspx>.

Aug.

2013.

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Leslie Walker. What Is Social Networking Addiction? N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Aug. 2013.
<http://personalweb.about.com/od/socialmediaaddiction/a/SocialNetworkinAddiction.htm>.

Marz Fuentes. Social Media and Networking: Advantages and Disadvantages. N.p., 8
July 2013. Web. 18 Aug. 2013.
http://marzfuentz.hubpages.com/hub/Social-Media-Advantages-and-Disadvantages>.

Shervington, Martin. Google Plus. N.p., 8 June 2013. Web. 18 Aug. 2013.
<http://www.martinshervington.com/what-is-google-plus/>.

Social Networking Service En. Social Networking Service. N.p., 23 Oct. 2011. Web.
16 Aug. 2013. <http://www.freebase.com/m/06h0c8>.
Twitter 101. GCFLearnFree.org. Goodwill Community Foundation, Inc., n.d. Web.
19 Aug. 2013. <http://www.gcflearnfree.org/twitter101/1>.

Walker, Miles. The History of Social Networking. N.p., Aug. 2011. Web. 17 Aug.
2013. <http://www.webmasterview.com/2011/08/social-networking-history/>.

Pictures
Pic 1: http://blog.scout24.com/2011/09/schulterblick-iv-social-networks-vondamals-bis-heute/

Pic 2: https://cctvcambridge.org/tech_breakfast
Pic 3: http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/authors-update/issue-5/socialmedia

Pic 4: http://marketingland.com/40-percent-marketers-using-google-9279
Pic 5: http://www.hungrypiranha.org/website-promotion/social-networking
Pic 6: http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2010/3445/small-biz-of-socialmedia-doubles

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