sign in sign up
<<
Home , Vine (service)

TECH REVIEW Social networking

he use of social networking is users and businesses. The profiles now very common in both home Although very popular, a brief can be validated, to some degree, by and work environments. The explanation of Twitter may be helpful. colleagues and can allow a reputation T field is expanding continually Twitter allows its users to share brief of sorts to be established. LinkedIn and we have had some requests for a (140 character) messages to their is used a great deal by business to roundup of common platforms. followers. The messages can be plain headhunt and recruit people. text or include links to images, videos What is social networking and or web pages. Typically, users will ? follow a number of Twitter users who Pinterest is for building shareable pin As these terms are quite new and the post on topics they are interested in. boards of mostly images on a theme. landscape is constantly evolving, there Messages can also particular Users create these boards on various are no clearly agreed on definitions. terms to allow messages from many topics, such as arts and craft, food, They are defined over and over on the sources to gravitate around a topic. This travel and animals. There are also internet but with no clear agreement. is done by the ‘’. For instance, plenty of medical themed boards. At this stage it’s not unreasonable to #breakingnews is often added to consider them interchangeable. breaking news by news outlets. Some services are primarily one- This allows easy searching for content Yammer (owned by Microsoft) is a fairly to-one messaging services yet others of interest. In the ophthalmology popular professional messaging service. are more about building multi-person world, The College, @RCOphth, sends It allows members of organisations to networks. WhatsApp is a good example. out topical tweets frequently. Most form groups and send messages within In its core use, it is a person-to- hospitals also do similar (as does the them. Individual networks are kept person message platform (much like GMC and BMA). In fact, it’s hard to find quite separate, meaning messages texting). This core use has evolved a large corporation that does not tweet within a company are kept within the and the platform now supports group these days. There is also nothing to company network. Groups can access messaging. In fact, many companies stop a user having a personal (e.g. shared files and links, so it can be a use WhatsApp for rapid communication @johnsmith) and a professional (e.g. good way to work on a project. Quite a between groups of people. The @drjohnsmith) Twitter account. few hospitals have Yammer networks. boundary then between messaging The payment model is interesting. services and networking services Employees of ‘NHS Trust X’ can freely becomes blurred. For this article we Periscope is one of the newer media use Yammer for their work (using their include messaging-only platforms sharing apps. The service is owned by ‘Trust X’ email address). From then on in addition to true social networking Twitter. Periscope allows live sharing of a ‘Trust X’ Yammer network can freely services. Unless mentioned the services video from a smartphone. Other users grow and evolve. If the Trust wants to described are free to use. can view the live video broadcasts. organise control or ownership of the Socially, people use periscope to share Yammer network, it can, but it costs video of events they attend and video money. The current king of social networking tutorials (like cooking and building is Facebook. The service needs no things). In business Periscope can be Google+ introduction and is only mentioned used for showing product demos or Google+ is Google’s answer to here for completeness. Its use in behind the scenes type videos. Facebook. It allows posting and sharing the work environment is mostly for in a similar way. The posts tend to be support groups and private practice Vine longer and in more depth. The topics advertisement. Vine is another video sharing service also tend to be more technical and owned by Twitter, but this one is serious. Overall though, Google+ only for six second clips. It’s quite hasn’t managed to compete well with Instagram is a service where photos and remarkable how much content can be Facebook, only having a fraction of the images are at the core of the network. communicated in six seconds of video. members. Individuals and business can post From news headlines to DIY videos, photos (and videos up to 15 seconds). Vine has a lot of content. Much like Facebook, users can have Snapchat is a very popular messaging followers who can be notified when LinkedIn service among young people especially. new postings are made. The service LinkedIn (owned by Microsoft) is Like Facebook and Twitter many is of most appeal for home use, but a very work and business centric users can follow individuals who post businesses are using it more and more service. Users can build a CV of their messages (or snaps). The key difference to post images and videos of their experience in their LinkedIn profile is that Snapchat is about right now. events and products. and use that to interact with other Instant messages (or videos) between

eye news | AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2016 | VOL 23 NO 2 | www.eyenews.uk.com TECH REVIEW

individuals are deleted a few seconds vulnerable. If you are using a separate after being read. The other very popular account, please use a unique password. feature is ‘stories’. A user can post Many passwords for these services have images, text or videos on a theme (for been leaked (most recently LinkedIn). If instance, their day). These exist for their you use the same password on another followers to see, but only for 24 hours. site, you risk losing control of a lot of After that they are deleted. Businesses your (especially if you are using the platform to create topical use the same password for your email Mr David Haider, Consultant Ophthalmologist and stories and current news items. account). Chief Clinical Information Officer, Bolton Foundation Trust, UK. Security Responsible posting E: [email protected] Some of the above services can be Although this area is beyond the scope Twitter: @drdavidhaider joined with an existing user account and word count of this article, I do have (such as a Facebook or Twitter account). one link to share. Please have a read of Declaration of Competing Interests None declared. This is a good option as it avoids the this very brief GMC article: http:// need to create another account that is www.gmc-uk.org/guidance/28572.asp

eye news | AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2016 | VOL 23 NO 2 | www.eyenews.uk.com