Social media is hot today. There is no internet-savvy person who is oblivious on what social media means. When we hear the word social media, what words do we instantly associate with it? Do you think of social networking websites such as MySpace or Facebook? How about social bookmarking sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon? And who can forget about the status-updating and microblogging website called Twitter? All of them may be designed differently as well as serve different functions but they all have a common element for them to be regarded as a group.

Social media pertains to websites which has a community of people that shares information through the website. In this situation, the website acts as the medium to get the message across. That is why it is called social “media”.

With this in mind, social media have been utilized by people for various reasons. Mostly, it is used for businesses for it offers a targeted community which you can easily reach out to through messaging. Others have used it for its sheer power of promotion. There is a part of the community, however, that is called as social media addicts. These are people who stay at that particular website for the whole day and concentrate their promotion there.

This behavior is good and bad. It is good because it allows a user to penetrate the culture of a particular social media website in the beginning. This way, he can easily talk to its users regarding their needs. On the other hand, it is also bad. As Kristy Bolsinger said in her article entitled “Are All Your Eggs in One Social Media Basket?“, focusing all your time on one social media website alone will not help you as that website falls down in the future.

Well, we have seen social media sites rise and fall. There are some websites that have consistent traffic and revenue but there are also others which has a decreasing popularity as time passes by. What you need to do is to prevent facing problems in the future and spread your marketing scheme all throughout different websites.

Of course, this does not mean that you have to join every social media website you encounter. Managing 4-7 accounts will do. Besides, you will just create confusion for yourself by joining too many sites.

There is nothing wrong with being a social media fanatic. Participating in social media websites must be done with strategy and care.

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Family relationships have been very popular on Facebook. Not only are its family-oriented applications such the “We’re Related” application one of the most used. Families also constitute the majority of the Facebook population. But recently, these numbers have gone down.

With this, the social network decided to give families a tribute through its new family group feature. This allows users to create groups of their families so that they can easily interact with each other. It is not really entirely different only that a group can be created that is exclusive only to family members.

This is done all because of the recent drop in users from 1.2 million to only 770,000. Facebook is losing numbers and it has to do something to counteract what is happening. Our guess is that people are using Facebook less because of the recent news about selling information to advertisers. Because information have become less private and the trust of users have gone down, people are less likely to disclose personal information about themselves especially that of their families. This new feature is for the goal of encouraging families to participate in the said social network.

However, this is bothering. It is evident that there are a lots of applications for families and having a separate feature for them is just nonsense. Or is it?

It seems that Facebook have found family networks valuable. In fact, family advertising is one of the most powerful viral advertising out there. It is also a nice tool for referral. A lot of people who just joined a particular social network will quickly inform their family members and ask them to join as well. So with this feature, it will not only be a couple of members. Now it can be the entire family.

Although the idea is somewhat hopeful, family oriented individuals have started registering just to avail the new feature. it had really triggered the interests on mothers. However, the young people are not really as enthusiastic.

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Online privacy is now becoming a major concern to Web surfers. With the proliferation of websites asking personal user’s information, no one in the online world can claim that his or her life is completely private. But what can online marketers do? Their goal is not really to intervene with their customers’ privacy. Their goal is only to get in touch with their customers personally.

When Burst Media conducted a survey regarding online privacy, it was no surprise that there is a concern about it in the majority. The young respondents have a concern with privacy but not as much as the older people do. After all, the older people have more social circles than the young ones.

This is where social networks such as Facebook comes in. When the social network started claim on all the information in its site, its users began to fret. Does the mere use of Facebook gives it the freedom to give out the information of their users? I think that is not the case. There is no other person who can give up their own privacy but themselves. Privacy, after all, is a right.

Luckily, Facebook decided to reassess its terms and guidelines. That is after the noise of protests it created with its users. But this alone is a sign that people are not so willing to give up their private information online.

But as Burst Media found out, the sharing of personal information on social networks is just one part of the issue. There are other ways on how a person’s privacy can be violated online. There is also the tracking studies which a lot of websites like to do. They do this primarily to study Web surfers’ behavior. However, what they don’t know is that they are intervening with the surfing experience of other people without them knowing. That, in itself, is unethical.

I would also like to add that status-updating websites can also violate privacy. Sites like Twitter is good because it lets a person share his life with the online world. However, it also tells people what they are doing, when they are doing it and how they are doing it. In other sites like BrightKite, the current location of a person is revealed. This is somewhat threatening to the person’s privacy.

I guess in the end it’s all about how you protect yourself. Stanton McCandlish in his blog post entitled “EFF’s Top 12 Ways to Protect Your Online Privacy” provides some ways on how you can protect yourself. We can’t really stop ourselves from using social networking sites or status updating websites like Twitter. At the same time, we can’t control the advertisers and researchers from taking our information. However, the information we disclose to the online world is still based on our choice.

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We all know that the social media bubble is at its peak, Facebook is one of the most successful social networking sites ever and it has got a vast pool of celebrities using it. Since the sites launch it has grown to become a type of necessity in world culture. Most people that use the site are very active users and they obsessively check there profiles every day as well as browsing there friend’s profiles.

Twitter on the other hand is a simple micro blogging site where users can update there status bars and allow there followers to hear there shouts. The site is relatively new, but has recently had a lot of media coverage due to the rise in celebrity stars using the service.

It is rumored that Facebook offered Twitter over five hundred million dollars in Facebook stock for the site, but Twitter turned it down. But could this end up being a serious mistake made at there end?

A lot of people (mainly Facebook users) do not really understand the need for a service such as Twitter, as Facebook has its own status update section. What is more intriguing though, is the news that Facebook have opened up there API for the status bar section. Which is ultimately what in fact made Twitter the site that it currently is. There is currently a lot of talk about Facebook killing Twitter. So let’s take a quick glance at the reasons why Twitter may or may not last.

Social networking sites are just like search engines, one of the most important facts is how the site is built. Plenty of social networking sites do not stand the test of time simply because there technologies are not advanced enough.

An example of what I am trying to say is to turn our attention to Google. Google simply revolutionarised search with there technology. This is why over the past decade they have shrugged off any rival search engine and will continue to do so unless someone invents a better way of search. The site cannot be cloned or copied because it is just too advanced.

Ok social networking is not exactly the same, each site offers something different but it’s the same core principle, the reason that Facebook will be around for a long time is because it is very hard to duplicate and they have created a solid platform with a great business model in mind.

Twitter on the other hand has none of this, although the site is great for connecting with people in the same niche, it has got nothing to keep a user there. I see twitter as a passing phase in the networking industry. That come this time next year will be saturated with clones. Heck! we are already starting to see the clones popping up left right and centre, simply because the site is too easy to replicate, it just has not got too much thought behind it, one of the main reasons that Digg is losing popularity is because it has just become over saturated with copycats and people are just getting fed up. Have you ever seen a copycat of Google? A search engine that is able to deliver such accurate results? Twitter just saw what other people have done and (Facebook status bar) and increased it a notch, I don’t know if Facebook status bar will wipe Twitter out, but Twitter will probably end up picking there own fate.

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