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Social Networking Sites: Adding a New Dimension to Relations TIS Staffer 4/8/2017 7:47:16 PM

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Social networking sites that came into existence with great welcome by the people world over have given birth to new kinds of social relations and interactions that were never seen before. In todays world, if you dont have a Facebook/Twitter account or any other social networking sites account you may be tagged as backward and dubbed as being one who has not been able to keep pace with time. Somehow it has penetrated the peoples mind so much that having an account in social networking sites has become as essential as having your home address. It has not only fascinated younger generation but its charm can be found among all age groups.

Sharing ones mundane things is so common now a days and it is like a daily meeting online with different people and throwing open your personal life like anything which also comes for public scrutiny. Even people update their bad mood or illness and wait to know how many people liked it and how many comments it generated about your new status. You may not get opportunity to see your cousins child but you can see him or her growing online. Networking sites have provided a stage of sharing your personal feelings which were so personal earlier to highlight before others. In a way emotions are getting more public and a thing to be shared openly going beyond the boundary line of private and public sphere of sharing.

It has widened the personal sharing and has opened it for others to feel and interact. The face to face relationship is getting transformed into on-line relationships. It can be taken as further step in the secondary relations. New norms and values of sharing have been introduced by these social networking sites. We are heading towards a very dialectical kind of personality. On one hand we are getting more and more reserved and professional in our interactions but at the very same time we are more open and personal while interacting with our online friends. People are getting more and more conscious about their online impression management. They are now more conscious about their way of interaction and presentation of their feelings. They react the way they are driven by norms of social media. In some way it has become functional by enhancing the field of personal expressions. But sometimes pouring personal feelings before others may land one in trouble, causing mental frustration and depression.

The feelings and emotions are being channelized in different ways. There can be found a new kind of grouping that was never seen before, one can discover various fans clubs, people liking a particular party, brand or religious group. Social Networking sites in a way have become a platform which is uniting people on different issues. In the past ban on some social networking sites has exposed its potential to influence and mobilize people in todays world. In any major change or movement in future the role of these social networking sites cannot be neglected in mobilization and publicity. These sites are going to prove a major weapon of uniting and provoking people on any issue.

On the other hand it has driven people in an unrealistic world of happenings. People spend hours on sites just updating their status or sharing information and it seems that the gap between personal and private life has now narrowed to some extent. These online meetings have reduced to some extent the virtual dialogues in everyday life, making online friends more important than those we encounter with in our day to day life. We have started living a life that is far away from virtual one.

We live in an alienated and unreal world of incidents, though we think now we are more connected but actually we are getting disconnected from real life. The culture of expressing oneself in a particular way has fascinated young generation to such an extent that they try to pose themselves in different ways, guided by reactions and comments on their posts. No doubt these sites have affected our life in many ways but still there are some aspects which would unveil themselves with growing time. Let us be ready to see more faces of Facebook and other social networking sites.

(Dr. Supriya Singh who did her Ph.D. in social science from Lucknow University is a Guest Faculty in the Centre for Globalization and Development Studies, University of Allahabad. Views expressed here are personal.)

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Social Networking Sites: Adding a New Dimension to Relations - The India Saga (blog)

Facebook's (NASDAQ:FB) core business is thriving, with strong engagement for the company's namesake social network and its Instagram subsidiary driving impressive top- and bottom-line growth. Here's a look at how the momentum from the company's social networks translated to earnings performance last quarter:

Data source: Facebook.

With Facebook having since passed 2 billion monthly active users and management indicating that ad placement on the social network is near a saturation point, growth could be more difficult to deliver going forward, but the company is hardly resting on its laurels. The leader in social networking is working on initiatives that have the potential to create huge benefits for its core products and open up new business avenues down the line.

Image source: Facebook.

From the invention of the television through the rise of the mobile phone, the screen has been at the center of the information age, but dramatic changes for display technology could be on the horizon. Virtual reality (VR) got its first big commercial push in 2016 and currently has niche appeal, but Facebook is betting on the technology's potential and angling to play a leading role in bringing it to the mainstream. The social media giant's virtual reality push is probably the company's most well-known innovation investment, with its $3 billion acquisition of VR company Oculus generating lots of press and evidencing a clear enthusiasm for display innovation.

Facebook's Oculus Rift headset has gotten off to a somewhat disappointing start, with the device receiving a number of price cuts following weaker-than-expected sales and trailing HTC's competing Vive hardware, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reiterated a belief in VR as the next big computing platform and has his company working on a range of hardware and content initiatives that could lay foundations for the future of the tech.

Facebook Spaces; Image source: Facebook.

The company recently launched Facebook Spaces, a platform that allows users to create an avatar to hangout and share pictures and video in virtual chat rooms. It also recently partnered with Samsung for the release of the Facebook 360 app, bringing the social network's panoramic photo and video content to the Gear VR platform.

In 2016, Facebook committed a $250 million investment in VR content, and Zuckerberg has indicated that his company plans to invest an additional $3 billion over the next decade to improve VR and drive adoption. The company also has plans to develop augmented reality (AR) offerings far beyond the filters currently available on Instagram, stating in its most recent earnings call that it plans to invest aggressively in content and infrastructure to build its position in AR. These technologies have the potential to change the way the world sees and interacts with information, and, if they take off, they'll open up innovations opportunities in industries ranging from retail to healthcare.

Image source: Internet.org.

Facebook is working to bring free (or at least low-cost) internet to the world, a move that will dramatically expand its addressable market -- and one that could threaten internet service providers (ISPs) and wireless carriers. The company recently launched Express Wi-Fi, a partnership project with a group of ISPs in Africa and Asia to expand the reach of connectivity, and it's got even more ambitious plans in the works. Here's a Zuckerberg quote from Facebook's most recent earnings call about the progress the company is making with its internet-beaming airplane project:

On the connectivity side, in April we successfully simultaneously beamed 16 gigabits of data in each direction between a location on the ground and a Cessna aircraft circling more than 7 km away. Eventually, we're going to use this technology along with Aquila, our solar-powered plane we're building, to beam internet to parts of the world that currently don't have access.

The company is also working on delivering internet by satellite. Of the roughly 7.5 billion people on Earth, roughly 3.7 billion are currently connected to the internet, so expanding the reach of network connectivity presents Facebook with huge growth opportunities.

Building its position in the telecommunications field gives Facebook ways to sidestep data cap and throttling issues the company faces from international ISPs as well as domestic providers including Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast -- issues that could become more pronounced as the social network makes streaming video content a bigger part of its platform. For now, Facebook's efforts are concentrated on making the internet more globally accessible, but, in the long term, growing its provider capabilities could make it significantly less dependent on today's telecom leaders.

Image source: Facebook.

Facebook is also aiming to shakeup the network hardware space, and has been distributing designs for "white box" alternatives and partnering with manufactures to make them available for enterprise. These are made with non-proprietary parts and run on open-source software, and pose a significant threat to networking companies including Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) and Juniper Networksbecause they offer levels of flexibility and customization beyond products from the current industry leaders. They also have the potential to dramatically reduce pricing power for routing, switching, and data center.

Increases in video streaming and the use of VR and AR technologies will put added pressure on data centers and increase costs for businesses. Facebook has an interest in facilitating these technologies, and reducing the expenses associated with networking hardware has the potential to remove a central roadblock to their progression. Lowering the costs of network infrastructure is also likely to play a big role in bringing internet connectivity to areas that are currently without it, so it's a disruptive initiative that could have huge payoff and pave the way for the evolution of the social network.

Keith Noonan has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Facebook and Verizon Communications. The Motley Fool recommends Cisco Systems. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Beyond the Social Network: Facebook Wants to Disrupt These 3 Industries - Motley Fool

The Union Government is contemplating to regulate the functioning of social networking sites to ensure safety of the users' data.

The Central Government on Friday told the Supreme Court that it is contemplating to enact regulatory regime for social networking sites or services like Whatsapp, Facebook, Skype and others.

The Centre made these submissions before the five-judge Constitution Bench that is hearing WhatsApp privacy policy case.

The Centre told that personal data of users is a part of their right to life and it can't be shared freely by telecom providers or any social network sites.

Any attack on data is an attack on 'Right to Life', the Centre told the apex court.

During the hearing before a five-judge Constitution Bench, the bench asked the government whether it would regulate data.

Counsel for WhatsApp and Facebook, senior lawyers Kapil Sibal, Sidharth Luthra and Arvind Datar, said that they were willing to give an undertaking before the bench that WhatsApp has not and will not share data with anyone.

A nine-judge Supreme Court Constitution bench is also hearing various issues relating to right to privacy and data protection arising out of question whether whether Aadhaar violates right to privacy or not.

This bench is to rule whether right to privacy is a fundamental right or not, and other contours relating to data protection.

A nine-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar is examining the nature of privacy as a right in context of two judgments -the first in 1954, the other in 1962 - which held that privacy was not a fundamental right. (ANI)

Link:
Govt Planning to Regulate Social Networking Sites to Ensure Safety of Users' Data - Outlook India

Its now possible to tour Beijings Forbidden City, without actually setting foot there.A social networking app allows would-be visitors to take virtual tours of parts of the city.

More than 400,000 Imperial artifacts have been digitized.

But as CGTNs Roee Ruttenberg reports, the job is far from complete.

For some 500 years, the corridors of Chinas Imperial Palace were off-limits to non-royals. The Forbidden City, as it became known, opened-up just in the last century. Now, a museum it attracts more visitors each year than any other in the world.

A new social networking app now allows those visitors to share their stories online. And museum administrators are working in other ways to deepen the experience.

Su Yi oversees an ambitious effort to digitize nearly two million artifacts. Her teams just a quarter of the way there.

The technology is changing every day. It can help us become more efficient, said Su, who is the director of the Palace Museum Institute for Digitization. But it also poses a challenge. New equipment makes our older methods outdated.

In April, the museum announced it had found another 55,000 artifacts.One by one, thousands of items are being photographed by highly-skilled professionals. A smaller number are being captured using 3D technology, and then placed inside virtual replicas of Palace rooms.

Everything has to be very precise, to reflect the true nature of the building, Senior Digitization Engineer Ouyang Hong said. And it can be very challenging to convert the large scale numbers into an accurate 3D representation.

Now, patrons of the Forbidden City, or Palace Museum as its also known, can virtually visit areas still closed-off to the public. Curators hope the digital data will also help researchers get a fuller picture of what life was like during Imperial times.Theres nothing quite like being here in person to experience the majesty, the history, and the culture. The digitalization process isnt meant to replace that, but rather supplement the old with something very new.

China has a long history, Su said. But the world doesnt fully understand Chinese culture or the Chinese people very deeply. We want to use the internet to help change that.

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Social network app provides digital tours of Beijing's Imperial Palace - CGTN America (blog)

NEW DELHI -- The Union Government is contemplating to regulate the functioning of social networking sites to ensure safety of the users' data.

The Central Government on Friday told the Supreme Court that it is contemplating to enact regulatory regime for social networking sites or services like WhatsApp, Facebook, Skype and others.

The Centre made these submissions before the five-judge Constitution Bench that is hearing WhatsApp privacy policy case.

The Centre told that personal data of users is a part of their right to life and it can't be shared freely by telecom providers or any social network sites.

Any attack on data is an attack on 'Right to Life', the Centre told the apex court.

During the hearing before a five-judge Constitution Bench, the bench asked the government whether it would regulate data.

Counsel for WhatsApp and Facebook, senior lawyers Kapil Sibal, Sidharth Luthra and Arvind Datar, said that they were willing to give an undertaking before the bench that WhatsApp has not and will not share data with anyone.

A nine-judge Supreme Court Constitution bench is also hearing various issues relating to right to privacy and data protection arising out of question whether whether Aadhaar violates right to privacy or not.

This bench is to rule whether right to privacy is a fundamental right or not, and other contours relating to data protection.

A nine-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar is examining the nature of privacy as a right in context of two judgments -the first in 1954, the other in 1962 - which held that privacy was not a fundamental right.

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Centre Plans To Regulate Functioning Of Social Networking Sites To Ensure Safety - Huffington Post India