Social Networks

The Social Networking services – Facebook et al

The internet is now ruled by social networking. It is no more a secret that it is the youth who use the services most. Parents don’t have a say in how their children interact with others anymore. Gone are the days when children were told not to mingle with certain types of kids. These days children actually choose who they want and communicate in all sorts of ways with them. The services offered by the social networking sites such as Facebook and the others attract the young more than the old. However this puts the youth in the path of all kinds of information that has far reaching effects on them now and in the future. As elders in the society it is our duty to educate the young ones so that they would know their ways around the social networking services and use them to their benefit rather than their detriment. This article seeks to shed a little light on the numerous productive uses of the social networking services.

Social Networking services were not built for the negative reasons some associate with them today. It is the unflinching desire of mankind to ‘destroy all things good’ that has made our social networks get a bad name. Facebook and Twitter have their mission statements as follows:

Facebook: to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.

Twitter: to instantly connect people everywhere to what‘s most important to them

It is very clear the creators of these services have very positive purposes for their actions. However we should understand that every good thing has got a negative side too and it is how the negative side is managed that makes the difference. I believe that if we are able to harness the goodies of social networking, the negative sides would not matter a lot. Let us look at ways in which social networking services come in handy.

Business

Although this is yet to fully gain grounds in the country, the potential is too massive to be ignored by any serious minded businessman or corporate firm. Facebook and Twitter alone gives one instant access to a huge number of customers. The only thing left is how to capture their imagination. For starters every company should just have a presence on both Facebook and Twitter so that news and other business information can be posted there. Those who have already done this are reaping the benefits big time. TV3, Viasat 1, Expresso, Joy FM, Airtel  and the others can attest to that. The youth can take advantage of this platform to do advertisement. They can advertise their small businesses and the response will be huge.

Event organisation

Organisation of events has never been easy; weddings, birthday parties and others are all organised on Facebook without any sweat. The setup is simple, one just needs to enter the event name, description, venue, time period and invite friends as guest. The invited friends can then invite other friends and they can also invite other friends on and on like that. There is even a space for invited guests to share their views before and during the event.

Groups

It is now a common place to see groups like Sekondi College Students Association, St. Johns School, Youth Volunteers Without Frontiers (YVWF), Just for Laughs and others. The group feature on Facebook serves as a platform for members to engage in the discussion of matters relevant to only themselves. Group members can even share pictures about group activities. This feature can be used by youth groups to promote their activities and attract more members.

Expression of views

Facebook does not really do justice to the idea of people expressing their views because one needs to be a friend of someone to see what they are saying on their walls; this is where Twitter comes in handy. On twitter users start discussions by adding a hash (#) tag before a keyword and all other users interested in the topic can join by using the same tag, it then becomes a trend. Users don’t need to know those contributing to that trend. One of the popular trends in Ghana is ‘#233moments’, where users talk about what they are doing at 2:33am/pm every day and it is really interesting. The emergence of a particular trend is usually influenced by events around the world. The just ended African Cup of Nations had a hash tag like ‘#AFCON2012’ so anyone who wanted to say something about the tournament had to add the hash tag to their tweet and it will be seen by all those interested. The recent power outages have given birth to #ECG and there is a massive number of users contributing on daily basis. There are a lot of professionals and opinion leaders on twitter that one can follow to learn more from. Below is a list that will interest readers a lot:

Top 10 most influencial Ghanaians on Twitter

1.      @RodneyQuarcoo

2.      @MacJordan

3.      @ameyaw112

4.      @TweetGhana

5.      @djkobbie

6.      @Mameyaa

7.      @Abocco

8.      @ghanablogger

9.      @niyyie

10.  @IheartAccra

Top 10 most followed Ghanaians on Twitter

1.      @Tuffour

2.      @ReggieRockstone

3.      @GhanaMusic

4.      @GhanaMixTapes

5.      @TMouganie

6.      @ameyaw112

7.      @EducatingAfrica

8.      @djkobbie

9.      @Mameyaa

10.  @RodneyQuarcoo

Job seeking

Job seekers now have another avenue to display their competence for employers to see without any hassle. This is where LinkedIn reigns supreme. On LinkedIn profiles are just like Curriculum Vitae (CV). The more academic and work information a user pumps in there the better the person’s chance of being spotted by employers. There is a great of professionalism on LinkedIn too. Now corporate bodies are all making their presence on LinkedIn so that they can attract the best talents out there. One can advertise their skills and competence on twitter too but it does not come any close to LinkedIn.

Youtube

Youtube was added because of its popularity among the youth. Youtube is primarily a video sharing website where users can upload and watch videos of all genres. This is where our youth have a lot to learn from. There are lot of video tutorials on almost every subject in the world. All one needs to do is to search with the appropriate keywords and the videos will just flow. There are a lot of ‘How To’ videos that show the processes for doing certain things that hitherto could be done by only experts. Some popular videos include

·         How to punch down an RJ-45 keystone with an impact tool (networking)

·         How to make fresh yogurt at home

·         How to tie a tie

·         How to design a computer network

Users can also install browser add-ons such ‘ant downloader’ to download the videos from websites and view them any convenient time.

Bottom line

The main aim of this article is to expose people to the good things of social networking service so that it overshadows all the negative publicity some associate with them. We must embrace this new technology and use it positively. My taxonomy of the uses of the service is not exhaustive; there are a lot of other useful things that can be derived from such services out there but at least this gives readers an idea about their usefulness.