The Next New Thing

After youtube became popular among the world, everyone started sharing their favorite video throughout the world. In the future, there will be a kind of web service for people who wants to be an artist to express their work online. There are numerous video which made by professionals. So chance for ordinary person to become famous is still limited. World wide website like youtube for non professionals will be demanded soon.

our class wiki so far

How Business is Using Social Networking
This is my contribution task. Then I have been doing research about both real and web-based social networking that could be used for business.

Web-based social networking sites such as facebook and twitter are powerful and efficient source of job hunting and recruiting. Both candidate and employer enjoy its advantage of saving time to get to know each other. However, business field like marketing research is having a hard time with reaching desired target, because as number of users increases, they are able to communicate with their friends only, they are unable to take a look at advertisement on the social networking site online.

About My Term Research Paper

My paper topic is an impact of social networking sites in today's society. A reason why I choose this topic is because popularity of social networking sites rapidly increased this past few years. Also it is unavoidable to talk about new media without dealing with Social networking sites. I pretty much did all research by using library database.

It would never been possible for web-based social networking sites to gain popularity without improvement of technology, particularly rapid improvement of Smartphone. By corroborating with Smartphone, connecting with rest of social networking members became more convenient and enjoyable than ever. There are many factors, which plays important role of one’s online behavior such as gender, age, and one’s characteristic like introvert or extrovert. The most influential characteristic is introvert or extrovert. Unlike extroverts, introverts tend to rely heavily onto online networking rather than interacting with people in the real world, which often cause them too sensitive about what others talking about online. Also dealing with personal information issue gets more and more complex. A lot of young people let strangers be in their community where they reveal traceable information such as gender, age, and email address. Those information often bring legal issue like whether being rejected for job was based on the revealed information online or something else. In addition, even though using web-based social networking sites made users life more convenient, some of researchers prefer old fashion to reach specific target rather than using web-based social networking sites. Increased popularity of web-based social networking sites has both advantage and disadvantage. It is also predictable that the growth will still go on in the future. Both users and websites need to focus more on disadvantages of online social networking than advantages. In that way, they will realize what they should be careful about better than when they focus on advantages. Also, the legal regulation dealing with personal information and what users are allowed to post should be more strictly formed, in order to avoid a serious incident like a loss of life. People should never commit suicide because of what happen in the virtual world.

Advice to Baruch College

In order to improve the college, understanding student's demand is the first step to be taken.

First of all, since most of students have a job, Baruch needs to consider setting up online classes. It is of course though to design online business classes because it has to have discussion, group presentation, and debate. So I would suggest to set up half online and half on campus course. Students meet on campus about twice a month for presentation, then they work on everything online. A lot of people have SNS or blog account, so they can easily communicate with each other.

Second of all, I think orientation, career developments and writing help, such as resume review, job fair preparation, and editing paper can be done online. In that case, student might need to submit their paper or resume in ahead of time to make sure it is ready for due date. But if those things can be done by online, lots of students and employees at Baruch have more flexible time. Also, preparation for job interview can be done by using skype. Baruch are famous for student's diversity of nationality, so lots of them get hired by international companies or out side of U.S. Those companies now correspond to job interview through online, because they find out that they get to have interview more variety of people in that way. Therefore, the career center needs to adopt with the new way of job interview too. 

Privacy & Confidentiality

Even after Internet security became much more reliable than it used to be, it is still needed to be improved for next generation.

Until up to recent, before SNS site became famous, users' privacy and confidentiality was debated issues through out the world. Because once it is on a web site, pretty much everyone can view who says what. Internet security was insufficient. However, internet security now has became much more sufficient. For example, most of SNS allows users to choose who they would like to share their thoughts and pictures. In that way, users feel safe to post what they think at the moment. What the most serious issue regarding to privacy is that users have almost no regulation of what they are allowed to say. So they can criticize other people and talk behind someone's back. Even though it was joking, some people take it as serious, which can be a cause of big trouble. It is very difficult to make a regulation for such things, but SNS needs to be more strictly supervised.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

When people get struggle with their real world, they need to get some rest for next day. Some of them take a vacation, go to place where they relax. And some of them escape to Virtual Worlds. The biggest advantage Virtual Worlds have is that it gives you an opportunity to become someone else who is ideal person of your dream. While they are in Virtual World, they become their ideal persons, by clicking icons, and typing what they want to say. The biggest disadvantage of Virtual Worlds could be that when people addicted too much to Virtual World, they are unable to figure out who they are in the real world any more.

In my country Japan, Virtual Worlds get closer and closer to the real world. For example, there is a NINTENDO DS game called "love pulse". In this game, players pick a girl who they wants go on a date. They have to make some approaches in order to have dinner, go to see movie, and so. After a player and the girl in the Virtual World become a couple, the player is entitle to enjoy spending time together with his "girl friend". There are already similar video games existed in Japan. The reason why "love pulse" became so famous is that even users are out of game, the virtual world continues. Which means even you are doing something else, the clock in the virtual world keeps ticking. Players celebrate the birthday of those girls from the virtual world, spend holidays together, and so. This sounds super crazy to me, but players turns on their DS regarding to what girls from the virtual world doing at certain point of a day. Those users will be unable to make a distinguish between real and virtual world.

Now, video games have such a high quality visual, therefore, it has a huge effect of education. Toys comes with a code which links to online version where toys look like really alive (Hindo). When I was a kid, I used to play outside a lot, fight with friends sometimes, and play with video games only a couple hours a day. In that way, kids can learn how to socialize with others, communicate with others, and what others react by certain attitude. Spend too much time with virtual world could have a huge affect on kids' personalities.

Source
Toy with a Second Life. Brian Hindo
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_53/b4065091329372.htm

Social Networking

Ever since Social Networking sites became popular, not only personal use, but also some corporation started to adopt with this new way of communication. These technologies definitely can be useful for advertising and marketing. Advertising through Social Networking sites is sometimes more influential because consumer's behavior has changed after those technologies got launched. People used to get most of information from TV, newspaper, or radio; however, more and more people spend time with their computers today. That's probably the most efficient way for them to get information. By throwing one question on a Social Networking site and get numbers of answer, market research can be done by less amount of time consuming. Advertising can be done with a lot less money than it used to be.

One of the biggest issues regarding to Social Networking sites is a personal attack. In my country Japan, some of schools have their own Social Networking sites created by students. On those sites, users can say anything about their schools, teachers, and friends. However, an identity of users are undefined, so if one user pick up someone from a class, post bad things about him, and them a lot of people follow, it can be a cause of a problem of bullying. Some students have committed suicide because of that. It may sound ridiculous to kill themselves because someone talks behind on web site, but also it is understandable that students at that age, their communities are everything about their lives. The most difficult point of solving this issue is because teachers and parents are unable to find out who says what. I hope the law of management gets more strict and parents and teachers take this issue more seriously, then this problem gets solved in near future.

Unlike facebook, most users of twitter are middle aged. One of the reasons why only a small amount of teenagers adopt with twitter is because they tend to have their society which they don't let outsiders to come in. On facebook, users are able to choose who can view their page, who can be their friends. On the other hand, twitter is used to connect with various people from a different society. Also twitter has a use of broadcasting celebrities. What they say on twitter explore immediately to their followers, then it sometimes becomes a big news. Although it is believed that young generation leads the way to popularizing things, twitter achieved a huge success by attracting adults. In the future, more and more Social Networking sites that target adults will increase its popularity. 

Source: Who's Driving Twitter's popularity? Not teens. Miller, C. (2009 Aug, 25)
New York Times.