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Positive Impact of Social Media

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ABSTRACT Social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter are amongst the most popular destinations on the web. No doubt in some cases this has contributed to Internet Addiction Disorder, but have they on the whole had a positive effect in our lives? Some believe that the benefits provided by social network sites such as Facebook have made us better off as a society and as individuals, and that, as they continue to be adopted by more diverse populations, we will see an increase in their utility. Anecdotal evidence of positive outcomes from these technologies — such as political activities organized via Facebook or jobs found through LinkedIn — is well-known, but now a growing corpus of research on social networks sites …show more content…

Users of these sites may choose to communicate through various digital objects, such as tags and in-built applications within the SNS, such as the 'visual shelf' application in Facebook. Users may join a community of book readers, connecting through books they have liked. | Bottom-up activities | SNS provide the ideal platforms through which users with similar values and interests can come together to collaborate effectively and cheaply. For instance, doctors can share and double check rare medical cases on health SNS such as Within3, or activists can organise a protest through sites like Care2. | Ease of use | A major attribute of SNS' popularity is their simplicity. Anyone with basic internet skills can create and manage an online SNS presence. Prior to SNS, users gained an online presence by having a personal homepage. The drawbacks were that these homepages are not easy to create and development and hosting of the site often incur costs. In contrast, SNS are free of charge and open for anyone to join. Most of them require registration, while others limit membership through an invitation from members who are already members of the site. | Reorganisation of Internet geography | SNS support new points of entry to the internet: people's personal worlds. Until recently, people spoke of the internet in metaphors of places (cities, addresses, homepages). SNS have shifted such location-based

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