Beware of social networking during working hours

Pay attention to access Facebook, Twitter or MySpace at work. A U.S. survey showed that 54% of CIOs (chief information officers, or CIOs) interviewed said that firms in which they work do not allow employees to visit social networking at work for no reason.

Were interviewed by telephone more than 1,400 CIOs from U.S. companies with 100 or more employees. To them the question was put:
“Which alternative best describes your company’s policy regarding access to social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, during work hours?”

54% of heads said it was completely banned, 19% said that access is allowed only for business, 16% allow for limited personal use, 10% for any use and 1% did not respond.

The company cites a few tips to protect the “professional reputation” in social networks:

- Know the rules of your business what is forbidden and what is allowed

- Protect photos and personal details

- Be professional while using social networking at work – follow the industry news and make connections with colleagues and clients, not with friends and family

- Be positive and do not complain to the boss or co-workers

- Keep your image polished. In social networks, you are building a professional reputation

- Even if your boss is liberal, monitor is not to be distracted.

Social networks can distract employees, but can also be important for business. Professionals should let common sense prevail when using Facebook and similar sites.

Ex-CEO of Feedburner will be new chief operating officer of Twitter

The founder of Feedbuner Dick Costoli, who sold the system to Google in 2007 for $ 100 million, left his company in July and now is the Chief Operating Officer of Twitter.

It is an initiative of Twitter toward the hiring of more experienced professionals – not to say ‘professionals who have worked on Google’. Alexander McGillivray, hired as a counselor in July by Twitter, also came from Google. The current Director of Operations, Santosh Jayram, which must remain in the company and to report to Costoli, is also a former Google.

England enter the era of legal notification via Twitter

The false profile of a political blogger caused a paradigm shift in the functioning of British justice: the first time in U.S. history, a subpoena was delivered via Twitter.

The User summoned signs on Twitter as @ blaneysblarney – passing by the site author namesake Blaney’s Blarney, and thus infringing the copyright laws of the blogger Donal Blaney. According to the BBC, UK law does not require that a subpoena be delivered by hand, and can use means such as fax or e-mail.

The blogger, who is also a lawyer, decided to proceed with the order via social network after learning of a similar case in Australia, where it was used Facebook.

Social networking and IT sustainability

IT sustainability issue is related to those articles below in a way of how the media can use the new technologies to work on issues that helps the environment. Nowadays the most discussed subject is the usage of paper. Large media groups use a huge amount of papers daily to delivery information that can be delivered online. The big problem in this case is the difficulty of the media to change the concept of the readers that online information does not bring the same credibility than the newspaper.

This lack of credibility from online media sources is based on the facility to post news on the net. This facility brings a huge amount of non worth information, what makes the readers confused to choose the best source. Actually the newspapers work in the fact that their information is more detailed and organised and has more credibility that the information spread online.

Also the impact of technology on journalism is changing the way that the newspapers deal with the news. The new “citizen journalism” became a good source of information. Such citizen journalism is happening in some cases almost accidentally with most people just sending the information off to their friends. Those sites are informal modes of news dissemination.

Today mainstream media is learning how to utilize better the online social networking to connect with its audience. Either this connection may be helpful (by gathering more information from many sources) or it also can have the intention to receive a feedback from the articles published already to see the reaction of the readers.

The relation between this to the sustainably is that the media agents are using the internet to replace the journalist that goes to work in the office. Many companies nowadays are using journalists who works at home, since it may save energy to the company and if we thing about the whole environment it also helps to reduce the air pollution once that this professional does not have to move from home to work.

To sum up, the mix of the use of online reader as sources of information and the advent of this new category of journalist which works from home can be helpful to reduce the use the energy in the planet.  Also the change of the way to deliver the information from the physical paper used today to online newspapers can be an important step to help the environment.

A negative impact from the social networking sites: How Does Social Networking Affect Your Health and Well-Being?

That’s my analysis from the article:

http://www.theappgap.com/how-does-social-networking-affect-your-health-and-well-being.html

The article shows how people’s health could be harmed through the use of large scale of social networking sites. The article says that those sites reduce levels of face to face contact. Example of Web sites such as Facebook can create an illusion of socialization. For example a user with a large network of friends using the Facebook can think that is connected well in society but they are having a wrong illusion of socialization.

A lack of real social networking, which includes the involvement of personal interaction, may bring even biological effects to the users.  Those biological effects can be the alteration of the way genes works, upset immune response, change of hormone levels, altering the function of arteries and influence the mental performance. Also it could increase the risk of health problems as serious as cancer, strokes, heart disease, and dementia (Sigman, Aric, 2009) [4].

This negative impact of networking websites can be even worse for children because those sites are making people become more isolated. Instead of playing and socialising with other children they are spending a lot of hours using this electronic media. This can lead to reduce the capacity of people to develop their social skills and their ability to read body language.

A child should interact with others to learn about how to live in a socialized world in a near future. This lack of socialization can bring in difficulties for this person to deal with life in school, job and even relationships. When this child get older becomes more difficult to learn how to live with others. The childhood is the best time to learn communication skills.

In the case of children, the parents are very often the most responsible to this growing use of Internet. Scared of letting their child socialise due to the numerous risks in the modern life, the parents prefer to let their children at home and the Internet can be the escape for them. Also nowadays the imposition of having technologic skills to any profession makes people using more the computer. Nobody can get a good job nowadays without no computer knowledge (Ware, Jim, 2009) [5].

Before the use of technology on communication people needed a face to face approach to communicate with the others. This could make a better development of socialization. Only from using face to face communication we can get from the other not only the verbal message but also the feeling that this person is having at the moment.

[4] Sigman, Aric. Well connected? The biological implications of ‘social networking’. Biologist. Volume 56. Number 1. 2009 February.

[5] Ware, Jim. How does social networking affect your health?. Future of Work. 2009 March.

A positive impact from the social networking sites: Social-networking sites share breaking news

That’s my analysis from the article:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/01/22/social.networking.news/index.html

The purpose of the article is to show how people are using social networking sites when news breaks to share stories and pictures. Few years ago it would spend many days to obtain detailed information regarding something that would happen in remote areas. The lack of news agents and the difficulty to deliver worldwide information could be responsible for a bad dissemination of the information.

Nowadays, with the use of Internet, sometimes it is possible to obtain information even before mainstream media has had time to crack the story. Social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr are today source of pictures and stories, especially in big events like plane crashes and terrorism attacks. People see these web sites like an immediate source of updated information.

Issues that occurred in the past could only be presented by newspapers in the next day of the event, today we can be informed few minutes after. Social networking sites like Twitter had more than 4.4 million visitors only in December 2008 (Strow, Adam, 2009) [1]. Facebook has more than 150 million active users and Flickr has more than 34 million registered users worldwide (Respers, Lisa, 2009) [2]. Those numbers shows that these networking sites can reach a range of readers bigger than the largest worldwide newspaper. Moreover, in the networking sites each user work as a journalist, sharing different stories and in loco pictures.

This is not changing only the characteristics of the readers but also the journalists and the news’ agents. Nowadays, the main purposes of the newspapers is to share complete, detailed and organized information, in order to attract even more the readers. Also the newspapers are working in the subject they are expert and they have more credibility, rather than the information spread in networking sites (Krakovski, Marina, 2008) [3].

The article offers an example of an earthquake in southern California. Before the Associated Press post the information about the quake, nine minutes after the happening, the Twitter networking site had more than 3,600 tweets during those nine minutes (Respers, Lisa, 2009) [2].

The impact of technology on journalism is changing the way that the newspapers deal with the news. The new “citizen journalism” became a good source of information. In some cases such citizen journalism is happening almost accidentally with most people spreading the information to their friends. Those sites are informal modes of news dissemination.

Today mainstream media is learning to better utilize online social networking to connect with its audience. This connection can help to gather additional information from numerous sources but can be also to receive a feedback from the articles published already and see the reaction of the readers.

Reference

[1] Ostrow, Adam. Twitter’s Massive 2008: 752 Percent Growth. The Social Media Guide. 2009 January.

[2] Respers, Lisa. Social-networking sites share breaking news. CNN. 2009 January.

[3] Krakovsky, Marina. It’s who you Know (Or Don’t). Online Social networks are powerful and ineffectual at once. Stanford Magazine. 2008 July/August.

Site to organize events and invite friends

The meeting with friends to a bar, a study group to a football game, launching a product for promotion, a show with a prize giving … Any kind of invitation, booking date or statement can be made through the Dindong, a kind of specific social network to organize events and invite friends.

It is the User who rides the invitation, with your text and image. You can choose from those offered by the website or any of their own preference. The colors, fonts and details can be customized according to the personality of the host or the nature of the event. It’s all very simple, just create a login to get to enjoy the resources offered by the site, all free.

U.S. politicians use Twitter to promote

Researchers at the University of Maryland found that the policy of the United States use Twitter largely only to promote, according to a report in The Washington Post.

Among the more than 6 thousand updates on Twitter profiles of Congress, 80% were included in two categories: links to news and press releases have already been distributed by most search engines and news, and updates on the daily lives of politicians, such as trips or visits the supermarket. Only 7% of messages are routed directly to other people on Twitter, which demonstrates the lack of interaction with citizens.

According to the newspaper, the study attempts to determine whether social networks and, especially, Twitter, really opened a new dialogue between elected leaders and the public.