This integration paper is an overview of the entire week’s projects. All the activities of the week are synthesized in order to provide the value or usefulness of these studies in my personal and professional life. The topics discussed in the week include should spamming be illegal? Why or why not? And a discussion on the relationship between Google and Social networks. In this week the main topic is legal ethical issues and social networks.
The first topic discussed in the week is about spamming and its legal ethics. The question put under discussion is should spamming be illegal? From this discussion, I understood that spamming is an illegal activity as it involves the offensive practice of sending unrequested emails, or messages through mobile phones, and other communication mediums. “Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it.” (Mueller).
I understood that the main reason for spamming being illegal is that it is detrimental and hurts online business to a large extent. It is not easily detectable and thus passes off as genuine and the web users are deceived. The online business is based on mutual trust. Spamming removes the trust in online business and reduces it to mere junk. Illegal practices of few may cause damage to the entire community. “It seems spam is a hotbed of financial scams as well as a black market for fake pharmaceuticals and software. Spam is now being used as a channel for a plethora of malicious and illegal activities.” (Spam Reveals its Darker Side. 2004).
I have the view that the fundamental rights of an individual could not be of interfered with another person’s rights and should not be detrimental to the right of others. Spamming creates more problems than it solves and in the long run, does injure the online business. In this situation, online subscribers and users have to differentiate between business requisitions and spam activities. “Spam threatens to make the internet less useful in several ways. One of these is by increasing the cost of going online.” (Worley 2001).
The topic helped me personally to take care while dealing with online transactions. Also, I am well-informed about the different impacts of spam activities on the internet. And to keep our social ethics, we should keep away from all types of harmful spam activities.
The second topic discussed in the week is the relation between Google and social networking. In this topic, the contribution of Google as a social network provider is deeply analyzed. The relation between Google and other social network provider is discussed in this study.
“As Google has so far failed to make any significant inroads with a social networking site of its own, Google Friend Connect mirrors Google’s similar efforts like Open Social to position itself as a platform provider with tools that power social networks.” (Chartier 2008). Online social networking provided by Google has greatly helped people to maintain their social as well as personal relations. I was informed that in the social community, social network sites have a great role. Social networking is able to function as a community of people of the same interest on the internet. It has advantages relating to unity in diversity. Along with these benefits, it has certain disadvantages also. Most of the dangers are associated with online scams. I understood that if we sensibly access social networking websites, we will be able to hold off the threats broadening on the internet. “Distributed social networking, where users can connect their profile, friends, and other data across multiple sites is still a relatively new concept and not fully developed.” (Macmanus 2008). Google’s social networking website ORKUT gained publicity in Brazil and India only. I understood that ORKUT is a strong social network over the internet. Google got into a contract with most other social network over the internet such as MySpace, Flicker, Facebook, etc by purchasing shares. “Google’s OpenSocial system will allow a wider distribution for tools like Facebook’s music recommendation service iLike and its Top Friends application.” (Google Opens up Social Networking. 2007).
Google entered into a contract with Flicker, which is one of the best photo sharing and publication media over the internet to strengthen its social network services. It is based on a classification system that allows the user to sort their photographs and images with ease. Google acquired 98.4% of the market share of Facebook. Through this, users of Facebook have the advantage of Open social networks on the net. YouTube is a video-sharing social network acquired by Google to strengthen and widening its social network services. Original video sharing becomes possible through this network over the internet. From this discussion, I understood that Google as an Internet search engine has tried a lot to improve its social networking streams.
I have attended the classroom 6 days a week. The discussion about the topic with other students in the class helped me greatly to prepare and present the assignment in a perfect and timely manner. I have submitted all the assignments for this week as per the given time schedule. Greater support from my tutor also helped me to learn all aspects of the topic and include it in the assignment. This week’s material helped me personally and professionally at a greater level to get the awareness of the different aspects of social networking over the internet and the impacts of spam activities on valuable internet resources.
References
CHARTIER, David. (2008). Google Friend Connect to Bring Social Networks to Your Site. Ars technica. Web.
Google Opens up Social Networking. (2007). BBC News. Web.
MACMANUS, Richard. (2008). The Distributed Social Networking Puzzle Putting the Pieces Together. Web.
MUELLER, Scott Hazen. What is Spam. Promote Responsible Net Commerce: Fight Spam. 2009. Web.
Spam Reveals its Darker Side. (2004). BBC News. Web.
WORLEY, Gordon. (2001). The Negative Impacts of Spam: Analyzing the Impact of the Issue. Web.