Derek Williams 
What Is The Next Social Network [EPUB ebook] 

Social networking is an innovation that has exploded in usage in a very short time span. You can now enjoy constant correspondence with friends from all parts of the world without ever having to leave your seat. In many ways, social networking is much better than all other forms of communication put together because of the wealth of information that can be exchanged in a very short time For instance, you can keep in touch with a friend who is travelling around the world; you can use smartphones to chat and the occasional video stream when said friend comes across something whose beauty cannot be aptly put into words e.g. a sunset, a colorful festival etc. This will allow you to experience a part of the world you never knew existed without ever having to heave your house.People have really taken to this form of instant communication, something that’s seen in the fact that social networks are the largest growing types of websites around. The growth of social networking has been accelerated by the fact that the programmers design very intuitive interfaces that allow people with virtually no prior online experience to easily become experts. While this in itself is a good thing, it causes people to ignore what is happening in the background. This is better explained with an illustration:Margret sits in front of her computer, switches it on and loads her browser. She then loads the URLs for her preferred social networks, logs into her accounts and starts communicating with her friends. These communications involve uploads of pictures and videos, commenting on her friends’ posts, making her own posts and the like. She then realizes that John, her globetrotting brother is currently online. She loads the instant messenger and John decides to show her the Roman coliseum using the inbuilt video feature on his smartphone. While this real time online tour is going on she decides to read up on the news. Being a news junkie, she has added all the fan pages of popular news outlets to her friends list so that she can get all important updates without having to go to all individual sites. So far so good.While she is immensely enjoying herself, all the information being transmitted through cyberspace is available to all her friends and the owners and administrators of the servers. Since she is not web savvy, she thinks (much to her detriment) that the persons handling her information are intrinsically benevolent. What she does not realize is that most social networks need money to run their servers, pay the employees, satisfy funders, and improve the architecture, R&D and the like. This means that they (social networks) find ways of selling off user information. This therefore means that within no time, she will start noticing ads about travel, news aggregators and all other things she showed an interest in, even in passing. Unbeknown to her, her naivety sets her up as the perfect victim for the numerous cyber stalkers and trolls always on the prowl.What most people don’t realize is that web technologies are first and foremost designed to make a profit. The most successful social networks and websites are those that made enough money to fine tune their marketing endeavors and to attract the attention of venture capitalists. This therefore means that the bottom line becomes the prime motivator; the Margrets of the world are just the minions being used to make that number bigger and bigger.When you go through the most popular social networks, you’ll just find a network of products and services being marketed by taking advantage of people’s desires. The end result is a mass of unsatisfied clients with a lot of useless information about products and services they do not want or need because of the constant bombardment from admen. Most people visiting social networking sites usually just want news updates and targeted marketing campaigns about the latest technological trends, music, developments in the automotive industry and whatever else tickles their fancy. They want to be able to willingly spend their resources on beneficial products and not to be forced to buy things by the aggressive marketing tactics being blatantly flaunted in the social networks of today.At the same time they would like to be able to have a modicum of control about which ads get to them. This can be equated to that strong desire to be able to select when a television commercial will be shown. You find that most people will not have a problem with listening or seeing an infomercial pitching a useful product; what people have a problem with is having a commercial about a car just when Jeremy Lin is about to make a slam dunk. Savvy advertisers and media managers saw this trend and therefore developed on-demand television. On demand television caused an immediate paradigm shift; first off people started enjoying the viewing experience more while advertisers were forced to be more creative when creating their commercials in a bid to draw in more converti