Page 343 - Computer Science Class 11 Without Functions
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Third-party cookies or tracking scripts that track users’ activities online are often used for collecting digital footprints.
Your digital footprints may be stored in databases specific to the search engines, apps, and social media platforms, as
well as public databases.
14.2 Social Networks
In this age of digitization, people have found many ways to communicate with each other online. Such interactions
often lead to the formation of social, economic, and political networks, called social networks. Users of social networks
exchange information, pictures, and videos with each other to stay connected with friends, search for job opportunities,
or promote their businesses.
14.2.1 Common Social Networking Platforms
In the past few years, a number of social networking sites and apps have become popular. For example, Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Telegram, and WhatsApp.
1. Facebook: It is one of the most commonly used platforms that enable friends and like-minded
people to network. Usage of Facebook is free of cost. After creating an account, the users can chat
with each other, upload their pictures, post live stories of their life events, create their page, express
their views, create a new group or join an existing group and follow people/pages of interest. Using
the Like button, the users can express their appreciation. Recently Facebook has allowed users to express more
emotions such as wow, love it, and angry. Facebook also analyses the users’ activity data to come up with
recommendations for its users. For example, Facebook prompts the users to add more friends depending on their
interactions on Facebook.
2. YouTube: YouTube is a common platform for sharing videos and audios. As
millions of audio and videos are available on YouTube, free of charge, it has
become a great source of entertainment and resource sharing. Further, as a
large number of academicians have posted several videos of their courses, it has become a great learning platform
too. YouTube has a 4-point policy with four ‘R’s:
● Remove the content that violates its policies.
● Reduce the speed of harmful misinformation.
● Raise the authoritative sources for news.
● Reward trusted creators and artists.
Users of YouTube can create their channels. A YouTube channel helps to know what’s in the news and is trending
globally. The free version of YouTube includes some advertisements while watching a video or listening to audio.
However, you may enjoy an ad-free service on YouTube by paying a small subscription. Users can post their
comments on videos unless specifically prohibited by the creator of the video.
Tagging is done to get someone’s attention on social media. It notifies the person who is tagged. When you tag a
person, you use the ‘@’ symbol.
Hashtags on YouTube are words or phrases that are added to the titles and descriptions of videos to indicate the
subject matter or classification of the video. When you use a hashtag, you use the ‘#’ symbol. Hashtags can increase
a video’s discoverability on the site. A hashtag links you to postings with the same hashtag when you click on it.
3. X (Formerly Twitter): X is a social networking platform where people communicate through short messages called
tweets (tweets are now called posts and retweets are now called reposts). The size of the post is limited to 10000
characters. A post posted by a user not sure about this one as twitter now has 2 options 'For You' and 'Following' so
in 'For You' any random tweet appears. Who have agreed to receive the sender’s messages.
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