Research Project: Social Networking in Business: Better or Worse than The Real Thing

In Businesses today it is important to have a network of individuals or clients in order to get ahead. Social Networking has created a platform which helps to bring professionals together for such a purpose. Like any other forms of communication in business, social networking has its advantages and disadvantages. With this project the idea is to examine the positive as well as negative attributes of social networking compared with the idea of meeting in person, i.e. ‘The Real Thing’. We will look at how both methods prove to work in some cases and also where they both fall short of pushing professionals ahead.

What is New Media

New Media involves the continued innovation and upgrade of technologies and method of communication in today’s society. Technologies including anything digital, computerized, information and even communication tools. New media is not all ‘new’, it also appears to be a transition from old to new as the technology becomes available. Lev Manovich refers to new media as “the mix between old cultural conventions and data representation, access and newer conventions of data.” A lot of what is new media today exists because of what was already available, some examples include blogs, wikis, social networking, chat rooms, mobile technology, VoIP and more. These all enables communication, collaboration, community, creativity and convergence and that is why they are considered to be new media.