Social Networking

      Many serious companies use technology in order to promote their business. There are many benefits to that.

       First, it is a much cheaper way of advertising because Facebook ot Twitter is free. Facebook has miliions of users and if each "Friend" would "like" the business page and post it on their page, it would quickly spread throughout the society. This is exactly what happened to Facebook company in the beginning. First only local people knew about it, then more colleges and eventually it hit millions of users.

      Second reason for using technologies in businesses is because the company can improve their services/ production by reading the comments. We learn from criticism, so reading all the comments would definitely help the CEO to understand better what needs to be improved. Chuck Hamilton in "What's Next? Your Future in Social Networking" article writes:

    "Companies are using social networking today to connect with affinity groups. If you're in insurance, for example, you want to know what your customers are worried about. What do they need in the way of insurance services? Today you can reach out to that community and discuss those issues."     

    The biggest benefit to the society is that Technology also helps to find a job. Nowadays almost everything is online so the place to look for a job is the company's website. It is not limited, like in the local newspaper, but anyone from all over the US can apply.

      On the other hand, there could be a "dark side" to using technology irresponsibly. If too much information is posted, it can be used by the competition. They can use the ideas or the most creative comments and implement them for their own benefit. If the secutity system is not sufficient enough, they private data can be hacked. From the consumer point of view, technology can have a side effect on those who post way too much personal info than needed. The posts sometimes might be misunderstood and cause a lot of troubles, even losing the job. As Marc Parry reports in his article: "Who Cares About Facebook Privacy? Students Do" : "Most facebook users modified their privacy settings at least once in 2009 and that "engagement with privacy settings increased significantly" between 2009 and 2010."

      Technology progresses all the time, and there are constantly new products on the market. Who knows if in the future the technology will spread so much that we won't have to go out of our house to have a job interview, because everything will be through skype. Social networking will be widely spread and people will be able to do almost everything online. We're almost there already.