Our group presentation

Our group presentation was on Social Networks. We broke the presentation down into six sections of Social Networks: their History, Relationships, Crime & Deviant Behavior, how Corporations use social networking, how you can use them in your professional life,and Privacy aspects.
A social network is a social construction of many individuals connected to each other by various kinds of relationships. The history of social networks goes all the way back to 1997, with a site called SixDegrees.com. You could create a profile and share it with others. Eventually, SixDegrees.com had about one million registered users. Now, the most popular social networking site is, of course, Facebook, which currently has over 800 million active users!! There are over 70 languages available on Facebook. A statistic that may seem surprising: over 80% of Facebook users are outside of the US. Email is also considered a social network, but it comes in second to Facebook.
Relationships are an intriguing part of social networks. Many people argue that you cannot form a relationship with someone you have never met. Social network relationships seem to prove that theory wrong. Really, consider the "old days." Relationships were formed through letters and then through phone calls, long before people met face-to-face. There is an interesting tendency for people to share much more about themselves online than perhaps they would face-to-face, which can lead to dangerous consequences.
There have been crimes committed through the use of social networks. These crimes include identity theft, phishing, data mining, fraud, stalking and crimes committed by sexual predators. There are ways to protect yourself from these crimes when using social networks. Set your privacy levels at the highest setting, and change your password often and make the passwords something very difficult to figure out (throw a number into the middle of the word, put a capital letter somewhere random in the word, etc.) Do not use words that are used as answers to the questions given to retrieve forgotten passwords, such as place of birth, mother's maiden name, or favorite pet. Always log off when you leave a site. Don't overshare!! Verify friends before "accepting" or "friending" them. Monitor bank and credit card accounts often. Have a second email set up in case the first one is compromised. Have email alerts set up to notify you of changes to your accounts. Be suspicious of anyone-even friends-who ask for money. Act quickly if you think your account has been compromised and report it at once.
Corporations mainly use social networking to engage their customers and to promote business. They do this through placing ads, running promotions, and sponsoring stories. They also develop relationships with customers on their account page. 99% of retailers now have a Facebook account. 11.9% of  fan pages on Facebook are for product, and that number is steadily rising. Many of the promotions run by companies on Facebook now are to get their fan numbers up. 77% of fan pages have less than 1,000 fans, but that number will probably drop drastically in the next year or two as more and more companies offer giveaways limited to their "fans."
Social networks are a good way to get ahead in the business world, also. Based on a survey in 2011 of almost 3,000 active social network users, 59% felt it was important to have a LinkedIn account, 53% said the same of a Facebook and a MySpace account, and 58% saw the value of having a Twitter account. They use their accounts for job searching, networking with former employers, within the industry, and with co-workers. Business also used social networks for hiring, keeping in touch, and promoting the business. So both an employee and an employer sees high value in using social networking sites.
Wrapping this up is the idea of privacy. Or should I say the illusion of privacy. Just remember there really is none. What you throw out their in cyberspace cannot be taken back. Even a deleted file can many times be retrieved. Use common sense!