Mediaboss Marketing

Social networking has become quite popular in the last few years, ever since Facebook became a world-wide internet sensation. Then along came Twitter, which also became wildly popular in this generation. Many people use these sites to check out what's happening with old and new acquaintances, or to let all of the people in their life know what the latest event is. But what many people don't consider when they get hooked on social networking is how the amount of time that is spent on these sites could be affecting us all.

America is one of the worst culprits of wasting our time on social networks. The websites themselves aren't the problem; it's the amount of time that we have allowed ourselves to spend on these sites. According to Nielsen, a global media research organization, Americans spent a total of 53.5 billion minutes on Facebook in 2011- equivalent to 101,000 years. And if that wasn't enough, get this: those minutes were only spent in the month of May. It is sickening to know that we spent that much time on a website at all, let alone in one month. What could we have done with those CCyears"? We could have improved America as a whole. If we had all just devoted that time to helping others or

finding solutions to some of our many growing problems, America could have been an altogether better nation in one month. Instead, we sat on computers complaining to the world about stupid things and telling everyone what we did that day, which usually wasn't anything

Sure, there are plenty of groups and pages for charities and foundations on Facebook, and that's great. But how many of those who cclike" those pages actually do anything about it? All we do is click the thumbs up button and BAM we think we're cccharitable." It means absolutely nothing. How about instead of CCliking" the page for a

charity, you actually go out and volunteer at the local homeless shelter? What if you spent half of the time you would normally spend on Facebook helping people who need it? Or maybe you could make real friends instead of virtual ones. You might even try spending a little more time with your family. The point is, we are investing too much time in social networking when we should be spending it living. When is this goin~ to stop? Time is too precious to waste on a screen. Log off and live.

Excerpt from:
Campus Star: Is Social Networking a pastime or waste of time?

An anonymous social networking website, with an accompanying smartphone app, seemed to help obese youths lose weight without fear of public ridicule, a researcher said.

Those who used the site, weigh2rock.com, self-reported a mean weight loss of 7.4 pounds, and those who used the partner app reported losing a mean 10 pounds over 4 months, Dr. Robert Pretlow of the Research Institute at eHealth International in Seattle reported at the European Congress on Obesity in Lyon, France.

"While weight loss from social networking is not as much as face-to-face weight-loss programs, social networking is much cheaper and much more widely available," Pretlow said in a statement.

Read this story on http://www.medpagetoday.com.

He said public social networking may promote obesity, especially if it lowers obese teens' self-esteem. Fears of social rejection and isolation may lead to sadness and depression, which can then inspire "comfort eating," especially of highly pleasurable food, Pretlow explained.

But social networking site where participants remain anonymous may help patients who are struggling to lose weight avoid feelings of shame and embarrassment. The idea is modeled after other programs in addiction medicine that emphasize anonymity.

"Programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Drug Addicts Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, and Food Addicts Anonymous demonstrate that support groups are indispensable in the addiction treatment approach," Pretlow said. "The crucial point is that people remain anonymous."

He added that the group support component helps the obese patients tolerate withdrawal from problem foods and motivates them to continue their weight loss.

So Pretlow reported data on the anonymous obesity website he developed. Weigh2rock.com offers online forums, chat rooms, success stories, a weight-loss "buddy" program, and other tips for keeping pounds off.

Since the site started 11 years ago, Pretlow said, there have been a total of 17,628 users, with a mean age of 14.2, and a mean body mass index of 32.7.

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Smartphone App Helps Kids Fight Fat

PARENTS and young people have been warned to be wary of the darker side of social networking sites.

Parents hosting parties have also been urged to ensure young people are supervised and can get home safely.

The warnings follow the arrest of four people in relation to an alleged sexual assault of a girl aged under 16 earlier this year.

Footage of the alleged incident was uploaded on to social networking sites.

A Werribee girl, 16, a Bundoora boy, 16, a Glenroy man, 19, and an Altona Meadows man, 20, were taken into custody last Tuesday.

All were released pending summons and will appear in court at a later date.

It is expected they will be charged with sexual penetration of a child under 16, as well as making and distributing child pornography.

Footscray Sexual Offences and Child Abuse detective Sen-Sgt Jenny Wilson reminded parents and young people of the dangers posed by social networking sites.

The power of the internet when used in negative ways can do untold damage to individuals, ruin reputations and have a life-long impact on employment prospects, she said.

She urged parents to talk to their children about the positive and negative aspects of the internet, to monitor its use and content and advise young people about what was appropriate to post.

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Social media danger

In the past few years, academia-specific social networking websites have grown in popularity among faculty members at universities across the United States.

These websites, including Academia.edu, Zotero.org and several others, offer new and efficient ways for scholars and students to share research and find colleagues who share their interests. Similar to Facebook and Twitter, these websites allow academics to follow updates in colleagues work and research while sharing their own.

While a majority of students and faculty may place more faith in sharing work through academic journals and other tried-and-true peer reviews, the time efficiency offered by digital publishing on growing academic social networks may entice more users to join in the future.

Some might be concerned that edits made to papers shared online tend to have less depth than those made in academic journals.

Yet in spite of apparent shortfalls in the quality of digital publishing, the open communication and socialization offered by these new websites retain promise for students searching for potential peers and newer research in their fields of interests.

Academia.edu alone has more than 1.3 million users, 3,685 of whom are affiliated with UCLA.

Christine Borgman, the presidential chair and a professor of information studies, is one of many professors at UCLA who have used these websites in their courses.

Borgman said students in one of her advanced graduate seminars participate in a Zotero group to pool their works as a group and to track one anothers research interests.

The use of these websites by faculty members and students, however, does not counteract the risks of using social networking websites. With general social networks like Facebook, the ability to share personal or professional information does not include the ability to choose who has access to that information.

This concern for privacy, however, is not an essential issue for academic websites, as content posted by users is typically related to their studies and set in a more professional tone than might be expected on more general interest networking websites such as Facebook. Furthermore, this content is usually only viewed by faculty and students in the same field.

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Social researching: Academia-specific networking websites offer new, efficient ways for scholars to connect, share works

With New Look, Bing Gets More Organized, Social

Microsoft is revamping its search engine and exploiting the growth of social networking online.

Microsoft

In an effort to make searching on the Web simpler, faster, and more socialand further differentiate itself from market leader GoogleMicrosoft's Bing search engine is getting a new look.

On Thursday, Bing said it will roll out a new design over the next few weeks that trades in its existing search results page formata mix of images and various types of text-based results on a one-column pagefor a layout in three separate panes featuring traditional text results, results from specific information sources and services, and results related to your social-network friends.

At an event to unveil the refresh in San Francisco on Thursday, Derrick Connell, Bing's corporate vice president of search program management, said Bing's search results page needed to evolve. "If we don't evolve our search result pages, in the industry we'll eventually become obsolete," he said.

Evolution is especially important if Bing wants to gain market share. The search engine is a very distant second to Google, pulling in 15.3 percent of U.S. search queries in March compared to Google's 66.4 percent, according to comScore.

Microsoft clearly believes these changes must include increased organization of social content, which has exploded with the popularity of Twitter and Facebook over the past several years. Within Bing's results, a new "Sidebar" column will organize relevant content from your friends on social sites like Twitter and Facebook. For example, Bing will suggest friends who might be knowledgeable about a specific topic by considering their listed "likes" on Facebook. A feed will also let you see and respond to your friends' Facebook updates and questions. And users will be able to ask their Facebook friends questions via Bing.

Basic text results will still be dominant with the new design, and executives said Thursday that separating them is meant to declutter the page and make it simpler to find specific links.

A third pane, called "Snapshot," will show search results related to places and services, such as maps and restaurant reviews. A partnership with OpenTable will let users make reservations on the results page.

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With New Look, Bing Gets More Organized, Social