owly g.

Owly G.

The research subject area assigned to us was social networking. There are many examples of social networking out there, but they are more common on the internet. Some prime examples of social networking websites are: Myspace - one of the most popular sites, Facebook - a rapidly growing website, and YouTube - a community where people can upload videos and share them with people all across the world.

Social networking sites are highly popular, especially with the younger more computer oriented generation of today. The age range of users is generally from ten to forty years old. They are revenue vacuums for companies such as Fox, and have unlimited potential for marketing. Myspace alone has become an online community with claims of over 100 million users.

Problem one: Copyright infringement:

Many copyright violations have arisen through these social networking sites. There have been many lawsuits from this issue. The creators of Facebook have been sued for stolen content. Youtube has been ordered by NBC to take down every video of a Saturday Night Live skit. This poses a huge problem because thousands of people have this video uploaded, and Youtube has to search out and clean up everyone who has this video uploaded.

Problem two: Uncensored content and business relations:

Many employers, prior to hiring a new associate, will look up a person on a social networking site and see what this person does outside of work. Anyone could fake adult responsibility long enough for an interview, but the story their Myspace page tells is more likely to be the truth. Also, businesses don't want their employees to have uncensored content on the web because it could damage the company's reputation.

Solution one: The easiest thing to do would be to censor content. If social networking sites set up a way to view content as it was uploaded and delete it if it is illegal, this would eradicate the problem.

Solution two: If you have a social networking site, censor yourself. It could mean the difference between getting or not getting a job. Do you really want your potential employer to know how many different types of drugs you've done, or how much beer you can drink before passing out anyway?

CNN