Privacy & Confidentiality

There is virtually no privacy and confidentiality on new media websites. Social networking sites allow users to freely express themselves with all their friends and family. Users can stay updated or update their friends and family on their current status. It is generally up to the user to decide exactly what information to share. Social networking sites typically have privacy settings that users can choose from. For those who don't set their privacy settings, their information is pretty much up for grabs. Their information is exposed to everyone who is registered with the site. There are cases where employers would screen potential employees on these sites before making a decision. It is definitely not a good idea to create a negative blog on your boss, or take a day off because you went out to a party the night before and decided to post pictures. Due to the lack of privacy and confidentiality these days, employers usually tend to find out, and you wouldn't be in a good position.

Advice to Baruch College

I would suggest creating an open forum that would allow students and professors to create posts and to comment on ideas or suggestions. Students can start a post on virtually anything, club activities, selling/buying textbooks, or their thoughts on classes that they've attended in the past. I believe this would be a huge impact on the Baruch College community as a whole since it would allow everyone to communicate with one another. Thoughts and ideas can be shared freely by undergraduates, graduates, and professors.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual world is a type of online community that is quite different from blogs and social networks. They usually take on the form of a 3D computer simulated environment. Virtual worlds can be used for social interaction, gaming, and other social related activities. According to Ted Hoff of IBM, employees would enter virtual worlds to expediate orientation, and to improve mentoring relationships. IBM employees can be separated by thousands of miles and by joining virtual worlds, they would be able to share ideas, and interact with one another. Virtual worlds have the ability of gathering people from various cultural backgrounds. They are on the rise and are generating more and more revenue every year. Virtual worlds can also have a negative impact. People can get so engrossed by these worlds, that they tend to forget what is reality and what is not. Virtual worlds provide the ability for maximum creativity. Users are able to create their own avatars, or their own virutal representations of themselves, and are highly customizable. Use of virtual worlds are continuing to expand, even into the corporate field.

http://www.workforce.com/section/00/article/24/61/08.html

Checking Out Social Networking Sites

Well, let's begin with facebook becoming the largest social networking site on the net. Mark Zuckerberg is its founder and CEO. Facebook originally begin as a site that was only open to those on the Harvard campus but has now spread to the point where anyone 13 years of age or older with a valid email address can sign up and register. Facebook offers its users a variety of tools. Users can create profiles with photos, interests, contact information, education, and other personal information. They are able to communication with one another through public or private messaging and even through the new chatting feature. Users can create and join fan and interest groups. Some noticeable features of facebook are its Wall, a space on every user's profile where messages are posted and shared with all their friends and family. A Status, which allow users to provide an update on their whereabouts and actions. Also a news feed, which is located on every user's homepage revealing all of your friend's and family's newest updates. Facebook's most noticeable feature is its platform which provides a framework for software developers to create applications and the ability to share these applications with everyone. Myspace is another social networking site that has its own set of features. Some immediate impressions are the difference is user interface and layout along with the feature of music. Myspace is a well known social networking site for music artists who upload their albums onto their profiles. The site also offers the ability to create blogs as well as commenting on them. Similarly, it also provides the feature of photo uploads. Myspace also allows users to customize the layouts of their profiles through the use of HTML and CSS. Friendster, another social networking site also has a different layout and interface. It allows its user to share online contents such as videos, photos, messages, and comments with one another through their profiles and networks. Users can also create blogs and join forums. Like myspace, friendster provides the ability to customize user profiles by choosing through a selection of 40 different skins, or through the use of HTML and CSS. Similar to facebook, friendster also offers applications to its users. Twitter is another social networking site that is a bit different than the others. Messages or tweets are text based posts that are limited to 140 characters are displayed on a user's profile and are delivered to his or her subscribers/followers. Twitter basically allows a user to keep his followers up-to-date on his or her whereabouts. Twitter also offers the use of applications to its users.