As much as we all love social networking websites, we do tend to forget that we're essentially uploading our most valuable possession – our privacy. Entire lives can be mapped out on Facebook, and that information could be devastating to the person if it fell into the wrong hands. Of course, there's not any need to lose sleep over it just yet – there are a number of safeguards in place which are essential for preventing misuse of information. Users are asked to agree to the terms and conditions when they sign up. But the problem comes into play when the social networking sites wish to change the set terms and conditions. These changes are often compulsory if you want to continue using the site, and they often apply to all users, regardless of which version of the terms and conditions that they signed.

For example, back in 2009, Facebook faced controversy for adjusting their terms and conditions to such a degree that they retained the rights to any material published on the site, even after the user closed their account. More recently, Linkedin has faced criticism for quietly changing their terms of service, allowing them to use any user's photo information in their online adverts, unless the user has specifically opted out of the scheme.

The worrying aspect of these changes is that they are often done very quietly, with little or no press coverage. And even if users do get angry, they then quieten down and continue using the services in their life which have now become normality. When Facebook was starting out, they had to be careful with people's information to avoid bad publicity. Now, it doesn't matter how much bad publicity they get – people will still continue using the service, and now many people are asking ‘What will happen if Facebook's terms and conditions one day read: Sod you, we can do anything we want?' Will users be protected by the law?

Facebook is famed to be the worlds fastest growing and the world's biggest social networking website. The figures are staggering and speak for themselves. Apart from playing the key role of social networking, Facebook has become a veritable tool for marketing and advertisement and recently; a tool for revolutions in some parts of the globe known to have been under oppression for decades and centuries.

Growing rapidly with an unprecedented subscriber base, Facebook hit the three hundred million subscriber base within 5 years of inception, making it gain popularity and acceptance, the world over. It has been a medium through which friends, usually back in high school or college days reconnect and reunite with themselves. Without Facebook, this would not have been possible. So it has become paramount that if one wishes to find old friends to reunite with lost contacts, or if one wishes to be found by friends, there is need to be on the network database by signing up.

There is a great demand for social media websites today. Many of us are aware that the world has been converted into a global village, with these websites the greatest evidence of this. People from all over the world can communicate with each other through this medium, and people are provided with an incredible forum for sharing their views.

1. Social media websites provide an amazing chance to enhance the presence of our products. These forums are the best places for advertising our services and products. Due to the large amount of traffic, these websites are the perfect places for starting a business. We can regard these as the store houses for extra-ordinary traffic.

2. These websites offer us an opportunity to identify our target market. For making a particular product successful, you have to consider certain group of people. We can identify them through direct communication. This is where social media websites have an edge. You can converse with your potential customers and can understand their demands. In this way, you will be able to manufacture the products according to the needs of consumers.

3. Instant feedback is another advantage of social networking websites. Once your product is uploaded, you are most likely to get the view point of people almost immediately. Understanding the mood of customers is extremely important.

4. A social networking website is also the best place to evaluate the products offered by your competitors. It will be easier for you to understand the dimension of the market and you will be able to launch new products accurately.

YouTube has distinguished itself as the force to reckon with in social networking and in sharing information on the internet. It is the most vibrant and dynamic medium through which millions across the globe share their special moments in the most realistic three dimensional format- video clips. YouTube has gone beyond being just a social networking medium, but has touched some very important areas of life such as news and events, as well as a medium for marketing goods and services online. With YouTube for example, it has become easier for the news media to have access to certain breaking news stories and video coverage of events and other news worthy happenings without necessarily having their correspondences on ground to cover them.

YouTube has also served to be the undoing of certain regimes that will not allow the freedom of press in their countries and these places are generally inaccessible to journalists. With YouTube, it has been possible to bring to light some of the atrocities being hidden by these governments by their own citizens who are on ground. In the recent unrest in the Arab world, most of the ‘on the ground’ coverage was beamed by some of the biggest news giants such as CNN on YouTube by citizens. Some of the news broadcasts called i-casts can be downloaded online and watched at a later time.

Facebook and Twitter subscribers account for over 50% of all social networking websites and dating sites put together. Both have enjoyed a huge subscriber base and have to a very large extent succeeded in carving a niche for themselves. It won’t be erroneous to assume that the success and popularity that social networking sites have gained in the last decade would not have been on this scale without Facebook and Twitter. There have been indications however that there is a decline in the growth rate of these two social networking giants. The reasons are not quite clear as it is, but investigations have revealed a couple of pointers to this negative trend in the past year. Some of the reasons border on privacy issues mainly.

Social networking is the current renaissance sweeping through the internet and has played a very significant role in the growth and versatility of internet users worldwide. Before the advent of social networking, the internet was mainly used for information technology. The average user sought some information about something or other and gradually, as the subscribers of emails on the internet grew, more and more internet users hooked onto the web to check mails and to keep in touch with friends and family. Yahoo and hotmail played a pioneering role in this regard and over time, were able to create online real time chats via messengers, the most versatile being yahoo messenger that has undergone refinement and sophistication over the years. Recently they had integrated subscribers who have Facebook accounts and friends. Some of the social networking websites have specialised in special modes of communication- from emails to voice chats and free calls as is the case with yahoo messenger and more recently Skype.

Facebook is the world’s biggest and fastest growing social networking website. The figures of the growth of the social networking site are staggering. This is apparent when you analyze the duration of time it took to sign on hundreds of millions of subscribers. Research has revealed that it took popular radio technology almost four decades to reach fifty million users, while it took Facebook just under a year to reach a staggering and mind boggling three hundred million users! Even astronomical is not a sufficient word to describe this level of growth. Facebook in less than a decade has signed on almost a billion users worldwide and there are indications that the growth in the size of the subscriber base will continue to rise. Presents statistics from Facebook reveal that over 50% of users sign in daily and that each Facebook user has an average of 130 friends with a staggering figure of over 250 million pictures being uploaded daily!

There are over 900million interactive pages, events and communities created by users that people interact with on a daily basis. Users also churn out a mind boggling figure of over 2 billion comments that are responded to on a daily basis.

Media has become the most influential tool to affect the lives of many. Online communications and inter-linkages became possible because of the rapid development in global and social media. If you have parents abroad or friends living there, web-based tools and mobile contacts can make you keep in touch with news and updates on each other. Interactive conversations through on-line or phones become the best choice of communication when it comes to business, personal use and outsourcing information, products and avail services.

Gladly, it is through the important role of global social media which it became the most ideal in foundations of technology permitting the users to generate the web content to access in the application they need. More individuals globally use the high grade and best interactive communication in order to gather or give the data, concepts, tools, items or derive services substantial on their work or living.

Blogging and networking is aided by social media marketing in order for a business to gather costumers and audiences via worldwide web. Although there are personal blogs, most bloggers and websites were created to improve business. Websites and bloodspots help you get the target clients and gain big profit by simple networking and enhancing your business on –line to make it become attractive to the people around the globe.

You are or may not be aware but global social media helps you a lot in the form of net projects, micro blogging using your twitter, direct access to your favorite videos and movies through Youtube, recreation using computer games, socialization through Facebook, emails, instant messaging and chatting and more. If you are a business person and you want to compete globally, global social media can give you the best way to make all your plans in venturing your business online. Amazing as it is, business tasks become lighter and enjoyable connecting with your associates and fellow business men direct through internet.

Most people today are shaped by the influence of social virtual application. Take a chance when your teacher gives you a research work and some presentations. You have always the option to get the quickest way of doing your research and that will be searching on the net. Presentations can be very easy with the help of several applications available in the computer. Linkages with your friends using your yahoo messenger, Gmail of Facebook can surely ease your burden. In a split of few minutes you have all that you need in just less time and less effort. It is like giving you a big help by doing most of your task in a very easy way. That can be of great advantage for you as you can do other things aside from it.

A very simple reason which does not require any explanation is because the Chinese language is different from English, and there is not even one single word that matches in the two languages. But digging deeper, we are treated to rumours from time to time that Facebook is about to penetrate the Chinese market. On the other side of the coin, one wonders how many have ever heard of a Chinese social network opening its language barriers to the rest of the world.

There is no such thing as censorship, banning or blocking of a Chinese social network outside the country. This is simply because the networks aren't available in English for such measures to apply. It is practically impossible for a person who doesn't understand the Chinese language to sign up for these networks and use them. Even Google has not been able to crack this hard nut.

The over a half a billion internet users in China are what is giving Facebook a hard time to fix the puzzle of how to access them. But one should also look at it from a different angle and ask themselves why the Chinese social networks shouldn't let in the billions of the web population from other parts of the world. So, what are the most likely reasons for these networks not taking such a step?

The barrier isn't much to do with the language difference, but rather the differences in the cultures and policies. Local policies and cultures matter a lot to the Chinese and as such, simple translation of the languages won't do the trick. The internet companies from the West that have tried penetrating the Chinese market have failed because they are not able to conform themselves to the local policies. Currently, the leading social network sites in China are Sina Weibo and RenRen. Neither of these offers their services in English.

Another reason is that China still finds the Great Firewall, which is used for censuring political content that is deemed sensitive from websites, to be very important. This is the reason why non-local social networks do not make it to penetrate the market.