 So, far we have not spoken about physical or about you know networks which are online, we have talked only about physical relationships. Now, it is very important for us to also look at online networks, why is that the case? Now that is the case because face to face interaction has reduced drastically. When was the last time that you sat with a whole bunch of your school friends you know from different places and enjoyed a cup of chai together? Tough to find time nowadays isn't it? All of us are busy doing many many things and our ways of life has changed such a lot that unless we attend a wedding we usually don't meet most of our relatives. Even phone calls between them have become less. Like however the basic human need to connect with people has not changed over time. And ICT has found the solution by creating what we call online networks. So, there are several social networking sites where instead of having traditional face to face meetings we instead have online meetings, right? Online communities of interest users get together, they discuss hobbies, religion, politics or sometimes absolutely nothing, right? I am in a WhatsApp group with a bunch of my college students and we discuss what our children are up to. We discuss where we went for our anniversaries or how we spent our last holidays. Say anything because humankind by nature has this need to discuss, has this need to share. We socialize on sites, we read profile pages of other members, this is what Nidhi was up to. Oh my God, look, look at what Satish has done yesterday, we look at those kinds of information and then contact them and say, Satish wow, I can't imagine that you were in that band yesterday. You know what, next time I want to go with you, so you go ahead and you contact the person, you build your network, you extend your relationship. So what's new in social networks is because we have an online presence given our current styles of living, it's made it much much easier for us to interact with people, to keep up the relationships, to even build depth in the relationships because we don't have to spend two and a half hours commuting to get to the person's house and talk to the person. We just do it through typing, through talking, through sending a picture, sending an image and so on. Of course, you all are the experts at doing those by now. What's the benefit of these online social networks then? It allows individuals to present themselves, articulate their networks, establish or maintain connections, very important because this is a very, very basic human need. Now you could have very, very what we call purposeful social networks, you could orient them clearly towards work relations. So you have linkedin.com where what you do is you post in your CV, you inform people what you are good at. So in case amazon.in is looking for somebody with your profile, they can see it from your linkedin profile and come and connect you. Or you realize that you are very good at Python, you are doing good work and you want to interact with more people who work in Python. In case a startup comes up which is doing clear work only in Python, you want to engage with them. You do that through linkedin, that's a work related context. Of course, you know life revolves around romance, marriage relationships. And one of the primary motivations to get into social networks is to find romance. I am a very shy person, I just can't go up and you know find my life partner. Arranged relationships are not something I am comfortable with. You know what? Let me just try interacting with somebody through Facebook. Maybe I should go to some matrimonial site. That's also part of social networks. Interestingly, Friendster.com which is an older social network was started only for building relationships. Of course, interacting with people with shared interests become important, whether it's MySpace.com or Facebook, that's the kind of interaction those sites do. College student population wants to know what events are happening in college, which professor is cool and who isn't with giving grades. What exactly a course contains the informal feedback beyond what the course Outline says, therefore you have college social networking sites, originally that's what Facebook was supposed to be. And of course, for people like me, the Facebook for the Forty Plus is an amazing place to you know catch up with my old friends when I am in this midlife crisis trying to figure out what have I done with my life, it's almost over. And then you find out what your friends have done and you say, oh it's okay, it's okay, I'm not the only one who hasn't achieved my goals yet. There are so many others who have also not done it. So these are all the various reasons for using online social networks. And why they work so well is because the internet has made sure that it bridges distance at very very low costs. It's so much less stressful than a face to face meeting when I am meeting my friends from college, 30 years, well 25 years after we've left college, I am very embarrassed to kind of talk to them and show them how gray and old and fat I have begun. But if I start interacting with them through Facebook or through WhatsApp or through a Twitter, then they need not know exactly what I have morphed into, all they see is my interaction. So it's far less stressful. Also it has been found that when people meet each other online, they usually tend to put their best self forward, they usually tend to put that self forward that they would like to be, whether they are or not. And as a result, people tend to like each other much more when they first meet online. And then of course, the idiosyncrasies cannot come across. As I said, people focus on communicating themselves when they are communicating online, which is a huge benefit. And as a result, there is far less possibility of being judged. It's of course, very easily accessible with our current technology and allows for building and sharing of creativity. Often, you might think of a wonderful idea and you might come home and tell your family, ah, you know what, this is what I thought of. And your son would say, oh, that's great, mama, but can you please tell me where you left my notebook? And your daughter would say, mama, I had a major fight with my school friend this morning. I want to talk to you about it. Your husband will say, where is the food? And your creativity goes poof up in the air. Whereas if you've communicated it through the social network, through an online site, you have other people with like interests, with other priorities, or actually enjoying your creative creation and as a result giving a boost to that creativity as well. What type of social networkers do we have? So I have, you know, again taken this from Ofcom social networking site research and there are five different types of social networkers. One is who we call the type alpha ones, alpha socializers. Who are these? These are people who use the site in intense short bursts. I want to meet a new person, I want to find, impress somebody, I want to entertain somebody. So intense short bursts, you flirt, you meet new persons and entertain. You have a large, well a relatively large number of people who have problems and they become attention seekers and they get on to the net to get attention from people who crave attention, they want comments, they want likes in Facebook, they post their photos, update their photos, customize their photos every five minutes and so on. Several people are neither alpha socializers or attention seekers but they are followers. These are people who have joined the site to keep up with what their peers are doing. They want to see what everybody else is up to. You have the faithfuls, the ones I talked about, trying to interact with your college friends from 25 years back. You typically use the network to rekindle old friendships and the most effective users of social networks are who we call the functionals, who well sadly enough are a minority, who focused on a useful aspect of the social network. I want to get a good job, I am going to upload my profile on to LinkedIn, connect only to those people, work only on that, I do not use the social network for enjoyment, I use it with the sole purpose of getting a different job. These are the functionals, the minority people who tend to be single-minded in using the site only for a specific purpose. Very quickly then, what would the benefits of social networking be? Connectivity, developing commonalities of interests, sharing information in real time, finding a nice means for free advertising, increasing your new cycle speed because you can quickly communicate, helps people stay in touch which is a huge human need that is being met. Extremely accessible for self-expression, useful for job searches, useful in reaching out in adverse situations and I will just give you an example of that, helps leverage political power for groups, it gets different difficult personal issues, often very very important feature of social networks. As it gets difficult personal issues out of the closet in front of others, it can be an anonymous means of interaction so that these can be examined and evaluated in a very objective manner and through this people in trouble can garner support from their friends. So this becomes a very very important benefit of social network. Specifically we are looking at how social networks can enhance business, here are some examples I have already talked to you about what LinkedIn can do, it is a valuable business tool, there are so many members, the profile is designed clearly to function as an online resume, wonderful way to hire people, wonderful way to get a new job. We will talk in much more detail in the next two sessions on Facebook and Twitter, because I am not going to spend too much time on that right here. But safety and privacy are perhaps the most important disadvantages of social networks, it is important to realize that because of social networks sometimes face to face connections can get endangered, there are several instances of cyber bullying and crimes against children, abuse of fraud, identity theft, you have had several instances of this as well. Of course ask any parent and they will say social networks are a huge waste of time. Social networks can be addictive, they can literally be addictive and if they are going to be addictive then it has a very very negative effect. Some social networks result in corporate invasion of privacy and finally in the macro sense it is very unequal because it magnifies the gap between people who have access to computers and people who do not. So till the time that everybody has access using a social network means pushing back people who do not have access, increasing the gap between those who have and those who have not, not even realizing that that is what you are doing. So some quick tips for using social networks, use fully protected computers please, choose sensible, strong, hard to guess passwords, know the privacy settings, very important when you are getting into a social network, please go to the privacy settings and be aware of what they are. Be very selective when adding friends, do not just friend anybody and stop and think before you click. It is very addictive, it is easy to just keep going but stop and think before you click. What should you not do? Don't be an attention seeker, don't make online presence only about yourself, don't post everything on the wall, have some wall posts, wall posts means posts which are for everybody to read and have some private messages, don't mix them up. Private and public messages should not be mixed. Do not post inappropriate photographs or use inappropriate language, never, never publish information about yourself. Do not put up your phone number, your address, things which can directly lead to you. Finally never give applications or apps as you call them. Now permission to be activated unless you verify them. So this becomes very, very important social networks may be a really, really useful media for online communication but unless we are aware of its disadvantage, unless we take care of safety and privacy considerations, social media can become quite a menace. Again this is taken straight off the internet, it is a lovely slide to tell you most people tend to use social network in a casual sense to spend time. The minority are here who use it in the purposeful mindset. Of course we are all human, we can't always work. You know sometimes we have got to just enjoy the social network but it is important to not spend too much time in this dimension and spend more time in this dimension. Finally before we end here are some other interesting links that you can go through. You will enjoy these videos I am sure. And before I end of course I wanted to share with you that our own ministry of human resources has become very, very net savvy and here you are, they want us, they want comment on the new education policy. All discussions under the new education policy are being opened up. They are conducting polls, they have blogs. You can even record your message to them, plenty of discussions and forums in place which can be used. Here you are, this is a web capture from one of their mails to us. You can communicate with them using Facebook, using Twitter, using Google Hangouts, using Dig which is a bookmarking social network, using Reddit, using LinkedIn, using Mail and so on. You can see that even our ministry of human resources and development has recognized the importance of social networks and has embraced it wholeheartedly. So that is a very, very useful development. Before I end of course you guys are smart enough. One of the things I would like you all to think about is what are the different elements of social networks that you are already using in your ICT introduction course, in this particular course. Maybe one of the things you can do is list them out and I will probably give you an assignment along those lines very, very soon. I enjoyed myself, hope you enjoyed this lecture, we will get back and talk about Facebook and Twitter later. Bye bye.