Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Affordances of Facebook and LinkedIn

In today's technology era it is very easy to form networks with people from all over the world. According to Boyd and Ellison, a social network site is a "web-based service that allows individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounden system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system." There are a ton of social networking sites out there and they bring in millions of users. Each one of the sites have different technological affordances. These sites allow people to interact amongst each other and develop networks based on interests, views, hobbies and many other things. The two social networking sites I will be discussing are Facebook and LinkedIn.

Facebook is the most used social networking service worldwide. Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Once you create a Facebook profile, the whole world is pretty much at your fingertips. Facebook allows you to form a group of network of your "friends" and view their personal Facebook profiles. Advertising is greatly used on Facebook because companies can reach millions of people that fall into the audience of people for their product. Based on your likes on your profile and your networks likes, advertisers know what networks to go after. Facebook makes it very easy to contact old friends and share information instantly. You can post pictures and videos, and leave up statuses of what your daily plans are. Facebook has a pop up chat feature which allows you to easily have an instant message chat with any of your friends.

LinkedIn is different from Facebook because it is a business-related social networking site. LinkedIn has more than 120 million users that come from all over the globe. LinkedIn is available in nine different languages. LinkedIn allows its users to create a list of "connections". The list of connections allows you to grow your network by having second and third degree connections. LinkedIn can help people find jobs and career opportunities that are out there. When a user searches a company, statistics and information about the company are given. Employers use LinkedIn to search for potential employees. LinkedIn allows you to bookmark jobs that the user has applied for. And like Facebook, LinkedIn allows to post photos but not for the same purpose. There is a feature called LinkedIn Answers which allows users to post a question which is answered by the LinkedIn community.

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