History of Social Networks

A social network is a social structure made up of individuals or organizations tied by interdependency that requires them to stay in contact whether for purposes of pleasure or work. The people who form social networks could be tied by interdependencies such as values, friendship, business and so on.
Amongst the early efforts to support social networks via computer-mediated communication, are Usenet , Listserve, bulletin board services , Murray Turoff's server-based Electronic Information Exchange Service (Turoff and Hiltz, 1978, 1993). Examples of early social networking websites included classmate.com (1995), this social network helped maintain relationships among former school mates, and SixDegrees.com (1997) . These social networks allowed for user profiles to be created, messages sent to members on the “friends list” and to those with similar interest to yours in their profiles.

Social Networks are made up of Two different models of social networking that came about in 1999 and these are trust-based, developed by Epinions.com, and friendship-based, such as those developed by Jonathan Bishop. The impact of new media technologies on social networks allows not only showing who is "friends" with whom, but giving users more control over content and connectivity. Facebook is an example of a social network that has grown rapidly in size, since it launching in 2004. In 2007, Facebook began allowing externally-developed add-on applications, and some applications enabled the graphing of a user's own social network - thus linking social networks and social networking.

internet downloading and piracy

In its traditional sense downloading is the transfer of electronic data between two computers. However in more recent times this transfer no longer is restricted to just take place between computers but between cellphones and between a computer and removable media such as CDs. Such transfers take place at very fast speeds and can enable internet users to download anything from music files, movies, games and videos.

For in as much as this is interesting and makes life easier for users of such technology, there is an array of issues that come to the surface such as the illegal downloading of music for instance which impacts hugely on artists as fans no longer have to go to music outlets to purchase cds and dvds for instance but would rather purchase pirated materials. In this manner it brings to the fore issues of unethicity since creators of pirated work cheat the work of others by enjoying the fruits of their labour but giving nothing back in return as on many occasions, popular musicians and artists whose works have contributed to building and nourishing the soul of their respective nations like our very own Mahlathini of Mahlathini and Mahhotela Queens fame have died so poor that his family struggled to give him a proper and dignified burial.
Even before their death most artists struggle to live a decent life as the result of piracy as millions of rands, dollars, etc are lost in this activity. With this in sight then maybe it is imperative that more attention was drawn to the problem of policy vaccuum that exists in technology and someone needs to come up with ways to deal effectively with problems of illegal downloading hence the industry affected is a multi-billion dollar one and thus it should not be that hard to finance surveillance initiatives.