THE WAY WE COMMUNICATE

A virtual community or social network is a website on the internet that brings people together to talk, share ideas and interests or make new friends. This type of collaboration and sharing of data is often referred to as "social media". Like traditional media, that is often created by no more than 10 people, social media sites have content that has been created by hundreds or even millions of different people.

The first network, not currently known, was called "Six Degrees". This network was initiated in late 1997, but the server was released in 2001. It is currently one of the networks that have disappeared. It was founded by Andrew Weinreich, and developed by the company Macro View. This site gave the users the option to create their profile and friends list. The name was based on the theory that any human being is connected to any other by a maximum of 6 know people. Nowadays, this social network has disappeared due to its low popularity.

Some companies quickly enter social networks. Google launched Orkut in January 2004 to support an experiment of one of his employees in his spare time. In 2005 admitted 360 Yahoo and others.

The operation begins when once the technical support is finished, a group of initiators invite friends and acquaintances to join the social network, each new member can bring many new members and the growth of the social network can be geometric.

A good example of this is Facebook, a social network focused on students, much like Myspace, where millions registered and where there has been a major advertising investment from Microsoft users.

Another is Del.Icio.Us which has already reached a million users.

And speaking of this network Myspace.com has over one hundred million users, owned by News Corp positioning itself as the largest of its kind and includes areas as diverse as search for missing persons.

Nevertheless, social networks continued to grow and became extremely popular. The most used ones today are: WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

What are those?

WhatsApp is a free instant messaging application for mobile phones, to send and receive messages via internet, complementing mail services, instant messaging, short message services or multimedia messaging systems.

Facebook is a social network created by Mark Zucherberg while studying at Harvard University. His aim was to design a space where students at university could communicate and share content easily through the internet. His project was so ground-breaking that eventually spread to be available for any user on the network.

If we are registered on its website users, we can manage our own personal space: create photo albums, share videos, write notes, create events or share your mood with other network users.

The large number of users at its disposal, the acceptance that has had, and facilities providing accessibility, as access to the platform for mobile terminals, has allowed this network to grow rapidly in a short time.

The main use of this page is to share resources, views and information with people you already know (friends or relatives).

Twitter is a network where you can send plain text messages of short length whit a maximum of 140 characters called tweets, which are displayed in the user's home page. Users can subscribe to other users tweets. This is called "following" and people become "followers". By default, messages are public and can be disseminated privately showing them only certain followers. Users can tweet from the web service, with external applications, or by short message service (SMS) available in certain countries.

Instagram is a social network application for sharing photos and videos. It allows user to apply photo effects like filters, frames, retro and vintage colours; these can be shared in different social networks like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter.

A distinctive feature of the application is that gives a square shape to photographs in honor of the Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid cameras, contrasting with the aspect ratio 16:9 currently used by most mobile phone cameras.

However, not all social networks are used properly. There is a lack of control and anonymity and they give access to inappropriate content.

Here are some of the disadvantages that they may present:

• They are dangerous if not properly configured;
• They are addictive;
• They are used by criminals to know the details of their victims.

When these networks are used correctly, they can be very useful to contact old friends or distant relatives; besides, their use allows communication in real time. In addition, the information is continually updated.

Jennifer Dillon, Camila Alcuri, Brenda González and Bruno García - 3rd Year