The social networking sites are gaining a lot of popularity these days with almost all of the educated

youth using one or the other such site. These have played a crucial role in bridging boundaries and crossing the seas and enabling them to communicate on a common platform. It has become a popular and a potential mean for them to stay friends with the existing ones and to grow up their social circle at least in terms of acquaintances. The question regarding the safety, privacy and the legal issues have been cropping up all this time. Through this research we try to find out the impact of these networking sites on the personal and professional lives of people using them. It is a very subjective question to answer and is very opinion based and the same is reflected in the research methodology adopted by us. The report is initiated with the definition of the objective followed with the research methodology used along with the research design, sample size, methods used for the purpose of conducting survey. It also incorporates the sampling frame and the data collection procedure. ubsequent to this is the Introduction to the networking sites along with a brief description of the most popular sites. Then the issues of concern which have come up along the way in all these years since these sites gained popularity are discussed. The various issues and concerns of the respondents are also incorporated there. The next part of the research has the literature surveys which are the articles we took up from the published reports. !e then analyzed and interpreted the data at length. The last part deals with the suggestions and recommendations that the group has come up with after carefully analyzing and incorporating the opinion of all concerned

In this age of globalization, the world has become too small a place thanks to the electronic media and portals. "ommunication has become effective as never before thanks to the advent of internet. The social networking sites have also played a crucial role in bridging boundaries and crossing the seas and bringing all people at a common platform where they can meet like minded people or find old friends and communicate with them. It has become a potential mean to relation building and staying in touch with all known. #ence the objective that we wanted to achieve through our research is to$ %ind out the influence of social networking sites on the personal and professional life of the people& how it affects their relations, what are its uses for each individuals and how have they been influenced by these sites.

%acebook is another example of social networking site. 'eveloped by sophomore (ark )uckerberg of #arvard *niversity in +,,-, %acebook.com was originally The%acebook.com .%acebook, +,,/0. 1urchasing the domain name of %acebook.com in 2ugust of +,,3 for 4+,,,,,, the site was originally developed for college and university students as a way to connect with each other .%acebook, +,,/0. #osting the most members for a college based social networking site, %acebook.com is also the number one site for uploading pictures, boasting several million uploads daily. ince its inception, %acebook.com has now been opened to anyone with a valid email address and offers its members options of joining the millions of networks of people with similar interests. It is said that 5,6 of %acebook.com users check their account daily and that 786 of %acebook.com users check their account at least monthly .%acebook, +,,/0 %acebook.com generates its revenue from advertisement since it boasts a huge number of registered users.

!ikipedia states that a social network is 9:a social structure made of nodes .which are generally individuals or organizations0 that are tied by one or more specific types of relations:; . ocial network, +,,/0. !ith the rapid growth of people who use or have access to the Internet, social networking websites are a must for the Internet community to stay in touch with each other. ocial networking web sites help people keep in touch with old friends, make new friends, distribute new data or product, and many more aspects of our everyday lives. The first official social networking web site was "lassmates.com which was founded in <773 . ocial =etwork, +,,/0. !hat followed was a slow but steady growth in numbers of social networking websites to the overwhelming number of sites we have today. The reason that social networking websites work so well is that, like their inception, they start of small and then grow exponentially. The site starts off with a few people who then tell their friends about the site, then those friends tell their friends about the site and soon the site is a huge database of users connected by friends, acquaintances, or just random people. The web sites are made to 9:allow users to create a >profile> describing themselves and to exchange public or private messages and list other users or groups they are connected to in some way.; . ocial =etwork +,,/0. (ost social networking websites are often designed to fit a certain type of community such as the college community being mirrored by %acebook.com or a music?party community mirrored by (y pace.com. !ith the rapid growth of social networking web sites and their global scale usage, whatever one feels concerning social networking web sites is irrelevant because social networking web sites are on a popularity rise and are here to stay.

*@ A% "A="@B=

2lthough many people donCt think of it, social networking web sites harbour many dangerous elements and many people are concerned about some major problems that they contain. Ane such problem is privacy issues. !ith social networking web sites like Arkut.com, %acebook.com and (y pace.com, it is almost too easy to retrieve personal information about someone and use it to harm them. In a case with (y pace.com, the availability of being able to customize oneCs own site has allowed people to use phishing html code to create phishing profiles that allows that person to access anyoneCs profile who have visited the phishing profile. 1hishing can often lead to the loss of personal information such as usernames, credit card numbers, and passwords. .1hishing +,,/0 This in turn causes great privacy issues since that person can now access personal information and thensell it off to marketing companies for a profit. .(y pace, +,,/0 This selling of information to companies has led to the rise in spam emails that we all receive.
2nother great issue of concern with social networking web sites is that of child safety. Besearch has shown that almost three out of every four teenagers who use social networking web sites are at risk due to their lack of using online safety. .Doly, Earine, +,,/0 2 lot of the web sites do have an age requirement but it is easily bypassed by the lying about of oneCs age. @ven if they donCt lie about their age the average age requirement is around fifteen years old. (yspace.com has been specifically targeted for these child safety issues after a sixteen year old girl flew to Tel 2viv, Israel to meet and engage in sexual relations with a twenty year old male whom she had met through (y pace.com. .(y pace, +,,/0 2lthough a lot of the social networking web sites are trying to implement new ways to keep children safe, (y pace.com included, predators are finding ways around these new implementations and kids are still naive to the fact that not everyone online is who they say t++hey are. 2 third issue of concern with social networking web sites is that of copyright infringement. !ith the massive amount of files shared through social networking web sites it has to tell sometimes who the original owner of the selected file is. 2lso, commercial products are being reproduced by individuals and uploaded to these social networking web sites. FouTube.com is a great example of how copy right infringement can come about using a social networking website. (embers can pretty much upload anything they want on to FouTube.com to be viewed by anyone who comes across it. This leads to many people committing copyright infringement and uploading files and video clips that donCt belong to them. The only real way that copyright infringement is reported is through the self& policing of the FouTube community. .FouTube, +,,/0 !ith the easily missed copy right infringement FouTube has been sued many times in the past and is now being sued for over one billion dollars by Giacom on the claim that FouTube.com has <H,,,,, videos that belong to Giacom on their site without GiacomCs permission. .FouTube, +,,/0