Social networks are virtual communities and web sites where a group of interacting people who relate to each other and share common interests, their main objective is to contact other people or reconnect with friends, family or make new friends.
A social network allows users to have a contact list whether friends, relatives, friends of friends or friends who met on the internet so they can see other users.
The term friend on a social network has a different meaning in real life. "A friend is someone who has been invited to belong to a personal website where we can see their interests, occupation, messages or information we provide on the network."
These social networks emerged since 1995 when a former student of the United States creates a social networking site that I call "Classmates.com" (Co-clase.com), whose objective was to maintain contact with his former colleagues study, two years later in 1997 appears "SixDegrees.com" (six grados.com), and generates the first social networking site as known today for creating user profiles and a list of friends . In early 2000 between 2001 and 2002 are the first websites that allow online circles of friends. In 2003, popularized these circuits with specific social networks that also provide reunite with friends or making new friends with similar interests spaces.
Currently there are over 200 social networks com over 800 million users worldwide and is a figure that is growing every month.
The more users who use social networks are adolescents for various reasons: some by popularity, for that reason they are interested in having friends and internet generated new ways to interact and socialize with the theme of conversation is the new movie in the cinema, the current music , a ring tone for cell phone, leave messages about what they think of some current issues, so the lives of adolescents is on the internet so the anonymity and privacy are not interested and they''re replaced with the desire for fame and popularity.
When teens create their blog or profile on a social web most think that only they see their friends or who are interested in what you say, but the fact that anyone who surfs the web can see whether your personal information, send messages to other people etc, therefore it is the responsibility of parents to guide their children to know and be aware of what they do, friends and the information provided in these social websites.
There are all kinds of social networks have, the scientific, artistic, professional, musical, universities are unversale, there are networks for each subject but the most popular are: Facebook, Twitter and MySpace where there are more more than 800 million usersworldwide and most of them are teenagers. There are other social networks that are less conocidads as Tagged.com, Orkut, Flickr, Sonic, LinkedIn and Fotolog among others.
Social networks allow users to create their own website where they can tell who they are, their tastes and preferences and any personal information you want to share with other users also includes your name, address, phone number, city and tastes like movies , etc music.
Social networks have advantages and disadvantages. Among the advantages we mensionar:
It allows companies to talk with users to know your opinion directly without intermediaries making it a valuable source of firsthand information and updated.
Provide transparency in their interaction with the market, so the company knows that everything that is said or intended to circulate openly either Twitter or Facebook and will be answered immediately, approved or disqualified by users can be customers or potential new customers.
Increase the ability to call and dissemination as any company message arrives so fast and instantaneous a lot more people.
They are free so do not generate any cost or have a low cost to the company.
They also have disadvantages, among these are:
Invasion of privacy and looking your personal information and what you say is a lie or truth.
Lack of security for all your personal information is circulating all over the net and anyone can see it.
Addiction because many people spend more time on social networks and do not perform other work that are also important.
It also has many risks among which are:
Upload photos that reflect their own or others privacy situations.
Give personal information.
Making friends with people who do not know.
Meet in person with friends who met on the net
The way to overcome these risks is:
1. Sort the contacts in separate groups known family, friends, school, etc. to decide who can view your information and who is not.
2. Set up the different groups to decide who can see personal information and who is not.
3. Carefully Selecckionar who sees your personal information such as phone number and address.
4. There should always be available to all so that you can configure the page so that only friends and family can find it.
Be responsible to create a social network, we should not expose ourselves to others and care for the information proporcinemos.