Social Networking

One of the major ways social networking is used to review products and services. I believe all most all people look up a product or a service before they buying or using the product or service. In Kristina Grifantini's article "Can You Trust Crowd Wisdom" she speaks of how many people use stars and basis to whether or not the product or service is good. The article states "His team looked at hundreds of thousands of items and millions of votes across the three sites. In each case, they found that a small number of users accounted for a large number of ratings." That is the dark side to looking at these reviews online is that sometimes people write multiple reviews on a product or service. However at the end of the day the reviews can be helpful if you use them properly one tip from the article is to look over overly positive or negative reviews. I think the way we communicate with social networking has big affects on today's world because we have instantaneous access to so much and so many people now. As stated in Hilary Stout's article "Antisocial Networking" "Last week, the Pew Research Center found that half of American teenagers — defined in the study as ages 12 through 17 — send 50 or more text messages a day and that one third send more than 100 a day. Two thirds of the texters surveyed by the center’s Internet and American Life Project said they were more likely to use their cellphones to text friends than to call them. Fifty-four percent said they text their friends once a day, but only 33 percent said they talk to their friends face-to-face on a daily basis. The findings came just a few months after the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that Americans between the ages of 8 and 18 spend on average 7 1/2 hours a day using some sort of electronic device, from smart phones to MP3 players to computers — a number that startled many adults, even those who keep their BlackBerrys within arm’s reach during most waking hours." We see how much we use social networking in todays world and its a positive thing because it keep us connected. However a dark side to this is "The laughs were typed ha ha’s. “O.K.” was just “K” and “See you” was rendered as “c ya.”" which causes less use of proper grammar, which is viewed as laziness. Overall i think its a very positive things with a few dark sides.