SHARING ONLINE 15 SOCIAL NETWORKS Answer these questions. a. What are the most popular social networks in your class? Why? Discuss. b. How do you share your videos and music with your friends? c. Have you ever used streaming? What for? What are its pros and cons? d. Where does the word app come from? What is it? to foster: promuovere to gain: guadagnare pricey: costoso sole: unico to treble: triplicare The effect of LIKES on teenagers A study carried at the UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) Brain Mapping Centre in August 2016 on the brain of 32 teenagers using social networks, revealed that certain regions of the brain become activated by LIKES and especially the brain s reward centre. This is the same group of regions responding when we see pictures of a person we love or when we win money. Social networks are online communities of people who use dedicated websites to share interests and activities, socially interact with other members, and foster the development of online communication. To be part of a social networking site and benefit from the different options offered to members, it is necessary to sign up and give personal details. It is then possible to create and join groups in a virtual social playground in which members can interact in a variety of ways: through chat lines, instant messaging, emails, videos, voice chat, file sharing, blogging, and discussion groups. The success of social networks has contributed to change the main purpose of the Internet itself: from a tool for archiving and transmitting data to a tool that facilitates relationships and collaboration, and allows users to add content, i.e. the Web 2.0. There are hundreds of different social networks, but they all share some common characteristics: they are free and easy to access; anyone can provide content or edit what is already there; and they are continuously updated. However, there are some problems because social networks may raise issues related to privacy and identity when writing very personal comments or publishing photographs. According to the members, social networks can be divided into three categories: public social networks, with free access for everybody who may be interested customer communities, with access granted by companies to their customers employee social networks, with access restricted to staff members. According to the type of service provided or the activities that can be done through the website, they can be divided into seven broad categories: networking (e.g. Facebook, MySpace, Google+, Linkedin, WhatsApp) microblogging (e.g. Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram) collaboration (e.g. Yahoo! Answers, WhatIs.com) image sharing (e.g. flickr, Picasa) audio and video sharing (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Vocaroo) live sharing (e.g. Ustream, LiveStream, blogtalkradio) written and visual publishing (e.g. slideshare). Nowadays, social networks are becoming extremely important for business success and especially for small businesses. Many companies use social networks to gain a return on their investments in different ways such as advertising banners on Facebook or searching and finding personnel on Linkedin. Social networks give the employers the ability to connect with highly-qualified job seekers and especially the silent ones, i.e. qualified people who already have a job without recurring to a pricey headhunter, for example. Moreover, employee social networks help globally distributed working teams to keep in touch and disseminate knowledge throughout the organisation. 226 Module 5 FLOWCHARTING