Despite issues such as privacy Story and cyber-stalking and grey areas such as implementation of penal provisions, social networking continues to straddle the world Cover stage like a colossus. It has brought into its fold new friends, new connections and new networks all of which promise to change social interactions like never before. Every morning, I wake up with a hope; that nature would smile, the birds would sing; ARPIT JAIN SINGHAI that my Facebook account would have comments; and my blackberry would ring!!! friends in touch, allowed closer interactions postman to convey our thoughts to a distant with distant relatives, spawned professional someone. With the speeds of Mbps blazing networks and even given a new dimension the social networking sites, we are on the to marketing and business. Social networking screen of any computer worldwide. AMOUS naturalist and the theorist of sites have today ushered in a totally unique It was Professor J.A. Barnes of Churchill FOrigin of Species, Charles Darwin once kind of social interaction. College, Cambridge who first coined the remarked, “In the long history of humankind But, in doing so, these platforms have term “Social Networking” in the 1950s. He those who learned to collaborate and also bared their sinister side – spreading defined it as “an association of people improvise most effectively have prevailed.” unfounded rumours, helping criminals drawn together by family, work or hobby”. And so it is in recent times that we find snare innocent users and trap gullible This term now largely refers to the Internet- humankind pioneering social networking youngsters. There have also been instances based networking websites that enable its sites that have made their presence felt like concerning wrongful penal censure of users to share their thoughts, pictures, videos never before. users as happened recently in the case of etc. This fast evolving culture of Social They have brought about revolutions, a Mumbai girl. Hopefully, as the technology Networking has permanently altered the overthrowing governments. They have “evolves”, we will find a more mature progression of the Internet in particular and spawned spontaneous protests against audience in the Internet-based social society at large. corruption and crime and other issues that arena. A recent report by Forbes exercise the minds of common citizens. At Today, in the 21st century, we do magazine (http://www.forbes.com/sites/ a personal level, they have brought long-lost not need a pen, paper and a grand old ilyapozin/2012/06/26/the-rise-of-social- SCIENCE REPORTER, FEBRUARY 2013 8 Cover Story The world has now become a global society with social media acting as a bridge for sharing sentiments. Although issues such as privacy and cyber- stalking seem to affect its largely positive reputation, the usefulness of social networking easily dwarfs the fears surrounding its worthiness. enterprise/) claims that newer social screen, while today a webpage loaded influenced in favour of advertisers. According networking websites are posing serious with tons of graphics would take a few to the report, companies are advertising challenges to the older ones. It has ranked milliseconds to mark its presence. on social networking site Facebook for content sharing interest-based site “Pinterest” Keeping aside the competition, the four main reasons: Awareness, Audience above “Facebook” and “Google+”. While user base of every social networking site is Growth, Conversion and Engagement. Facebook happens to be six years old, expanding. The recent $10 Billion public issue Brand awareness has always been “Google+” just celebrated its first birth of ‘Facebook’ tells us how hot and serious a major focus area of advertisers and has anniversary and its parent site “Orkut” is into business social networking has become. been done through public campaigns, TV its eighth year. As fate would have it, these And it has thrown social networking into the ads etc. Audience growth is another part companies are already facing generational hands of social marketers and advertisers. of brand awareness. Companies feel good threat from newbies such as “Yelp” (www. A large part of the content on these sites when more people talk about their product. yelp.com), ”Qzone” and “Pinterest” (www. is now being sponsored by multinational Conversion and Engagement are pinterest.com). companies; “recommendation” instead of smaller pieces of the advertising strategy. Social networking sites have a “advertisement” is being used as a tool to Such engagements through social significant regional influence. “Facebook” affect consumer choice. networking sites have helped companies (www.facebook.com) is popular in USA, Research by a social media education penetrate the mind of net-aware consumers. while “Sina Weibo” (www.weibo.com) company “Socialfresh” (www.socialfresh. Now, advertisements on our computers are and “RenRen” (www.renren.com) are the com) presents interesting insight into the being largely targeted according to our dragon kings of China. “Orkut” (www.orkut. methods that let the minds of users to be wall posts, likes, photographs and videos com) is the favourite of Brazilians while Social posted online. Another mechanism works the Japanese are happy with “Mixi” (www. by targeting ads based on your friend mixi.jp). Indians too prefer “Orkut” while Networking list, location and age. A report (http:// Europeans cling to “Badoo” (www.badoo. is rightfully www.jwtintelligence.com/2011/07/social- com). Video sharing site “Youtube” (www. compelling commerce/) by marketing communications youtube.com) and photo sharing site agency ‘JW Intelligence’ points out “smart “Picassa” (picasaweb.google.com) offer youths marketers are fine-tuning their strategies a content sharing functionality to social to adopt and consumer attitudes and behaviours media. technology are evolving.” If your friend likes something The dynamism of social networking and you quite often comment on his/her is being fuelled mainly by rapid growth in in Internet deficient rural India, page, then there are high chances that the three sectors – first, software programming which, in turn, is propelling the ads seen by him will appear on your page especially “user interface/experience”; nation towards a faster path of too. second, communication networks and Social networking sites have been third, advanced microprocessors. In 2002, industrial growth by induction complimentary revenue sources for online a simple text-based webpage would take of newer insights and fresh shopping websites. The retail brands are almost 1-2 seconds to appear on the user’s methodologies. smartly using social networking for directly 9 SCIENCE REPORTER, FEBRUARY 2013 Cover Story Social networking is also enabling the masses to raise issues that earlier used to be buried due to fear of administrative backlash. reaching out to the customers for socially interactive sales, giving them a foothold in the intensely competitive marketplace (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media-network/ media-network-blog/2012/jul/25/social- retailing). Since the early days of the Internet there were attempts to capitalize on the user data for customization of advertisements, but such attempts were blocked by government regulations. With social networking sites, the job of consumer data hungry advertisers has become easy. According to Wikipedia, “Social media Because, when you open an account with optimization is becoming increasingly a social networking site such as Facebook, you expressly consent to its “data usage important for search engine policy”. For example, the data usage policy optimization. of Facebook clearly says that they collect every grain of data when you visit the site. Cookie data and data like your “search”, “profile visited by you”, “time and date of photographs” etc. is also collected by the company. Other social networking websites work in a similar fashion. And how is this data used? The Facebook data use policy says, “It is used to measure or understand the effectiveness of ads you and others see, including to deliver relevant ads to you” (http://www.facebook.com/policy.php & http://www.facebook.com/help/cookies/). Many social scientists believe that behavioral advertising is “invasion of privacy” and seriously manipulates human brain. It is being said that compared to TV and radio ads which are blindly targeted at consumers, such advertisements are causing behavioral changes in consumers. Instead of going by their own instinct, people are increasingly depending on online campaigns to make their choices. Privacy advocates and organizations such as Privacy International have compared this to eavesdropping on telephonic calls where a third person is listening to your calls and based on what people are talking, she/ he is preparing a list of items that could be sold. In a recent development, US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has made it a top priority to protect consumer privacy online (http://mikeyounglaw.com/behavioral- targeting-ftc-to-crack-down-on-internet- ads-that-invade-privacy/). SCIENCE REPORTER, FEBRUARY 2013 10 Cover Story The social media landscape today is vast and varied Celebrities, especially from film business, routinely employ Search Engine Optimization (SEO) companies to increase their search ranking. These companies popularize events associated with Courtsy: FredCavazza.net the celebrities. Social networking has opened doors as a “vote” for that webpage’s quality. marketed through SEO engines on these to new forms of businesses and