Technologies

Businesses today gain many advantages from social networking. For instance, corporate recruits new employees via professional website such as LinkedIn, which is very efficient in finding jobs because it enables career seekers online to display their strengths and skills on resume. In fact, in her article, “Social Networking Technology boosts Job Recruiting”, Maureen points out that she looks for top executives on LinkedIn. It also allows people to connect with their friends and colleagues as well as endorsing and writing recommendations for their friends. Moreover, they also use Facebook and Twitter to advertise their products, which not only enhances their image by attracting the customers, but perhaps is the cheapest and the most effective way for corporates to connect with their customers and receive feedbacks from them via their tweets and Facebook statuses. Although benefits of social networking and social media marketing are significant, it also has a ‘dark side’. In USA Today article, “Viewpoint: Why Social Media is Destroying our Social Skills” by Jasmine Fowlkes, there is evidence that in today’s society social media interaction dominates both online and offline conversations. Students and young adults nowadays prefer facebooking, tweeting, and texting to face-to-face conversation. They would only be able to express themselves on social media and would be lack in interpersonal communication with people around them, which can, in fact, lead to their loss of self-esteem and self-confidence in the real world. Technology is constantly evolving and so is communication. People will prefer to catch up with this ever-evolving world with instant updates and statuses on social media than prolonged face-to-face chats.