The document discusses several topics related to social aspects of the internet. It begins by defining social networking services and some popular examples like Facebook and Twitter. It then provides summaries of Google, Google+, and Twitter, describing them as major technology companies and social media platforms. The document also summarizes other topics like eLearning, eCommerce, eGovernment, eEntertainment, and how the internet is used for politics, activism, and telecommuting.

1. Social Aspect of the Internet
Daminda Herath
B.Sc(Col), MBCS, M.Sc(Col), MCSSL, MIEEE

2. Social Networking
A social networking service is an online service, platform, or site
that focuses on facilitating the building of social networks or social
relations among people who, for example, share interests, activities,
backgrounds, or real-life connections.
Social networking sites allow users to share ideas, activities, events,
and interests within their individual networks.
The main types of social networking services are those that contain
category places (such as former school year or classmates), means
to connect with friends (usually with self-description pages), and a
recommendation system linked to trust.
Popular methods now combine many of these such
as Facebook, Google+, tumblr, Twitter,
Hi5, LinkedIn

3. Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational corporation specializing in
Internet-related services and products. These include search, cloud
computing, software and online advertising technologies.
Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry
Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford
University in Stanford, California.

4. Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational corporation specializing in
Internet-related services and products. These include search, cloud
computing, software and online advertising technologies.
Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry
Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford
University in Stanford, California.

5. Google+
Google+ (pronounced and sometimes written as Google Plus) is
a multilingual social networking and identity service owned and operated by
Google Inc.
It is the second largest social networking site in the world, having
surpassed Twitter in January 2013. As of December 2012, it has a total
of 500 million registered users, of whom 235 million are active in a given
month.
Google has described Google+ as a "social layer" that enhances many of its
online properties, unlike conventional social networks generally accessed
through a single website.

6. Google+

7. Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking service and microblogging service
that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140
characters, known as "tweets".
Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and by July, the social
networking site was launched.

8. Facebook
Facebook is an online social networking service, whose name stems from
the book given to students at the start of the academic year by some
university administrations in the United States to help students get to know
each other.
It was founded in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with his college
roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo
Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.

9. Flickr
Flickr (stylized as flickr and pronounced "flicker") is an image
hosting and video hosting website,and web services suite that was
created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005.
In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed
personal photographs, and effectively an online community, the
service is widely used by photo researchers and by bloggers to host
images that they embed in blogs and social media.

10. eLearning
* eLearning has many definitions. Most broadly it covers any form of
technology enhanced learning mechanism.
* This can range from blended learning environments where electronic
and traditional face-to-face classroom learning are combined in effective
ways to completely non-face-to-face distant based education delivery where
the learner has no physical interaction with any other participant in the
learning process.
* eLearning can be categorized along several axes: the underlying
pedagogical assumptions, the content model employed, and the size,
distribution and level of network access of the learners.
•Blended learning in educational research refers to a mixing of different
learning environments. It combines traditional face-to-face classroom
methods with more modern computer-mediated activities.
.The Sharable Content Object Reference
Model (SCORM) standard is one of the earliest attempts at standardizing
this process.

11. A learning management system (LMS) is a software application for the
administration, documentation, tracking, and reporting of training
programs, classroom and online events, e-learning programs, and training
content
A virtual learning environment (VLE) is an education system based on
the Web that models conventional real-world education by integrating a
set of equivalent virtual concepts for tests, homework, classes,
classrooms.

14. Other Classifications
*When We classify eLearning systems, we look at three
other
* The size of the class
* The geographical spread of the learners
* Internet accessibility.
* Other types of delivery channels including
CD-based, Audio or Video Cassette based and TV and radio
broadcast.

15. eCommerce
•eCommerce and eBusiness are sometimes interchangeably used terms
which refers to one of two broad definitions.
E-Commerce
* The narrow end definition is ‘the activity of buying and selling
products and services on the web’.
* The broad definition is ‘using Internet technologies to perform any
business process’.
* e-Business defines all business activities of an organization including
selling goods and services, collecting payments, ordering materials and
supplies, hiring personnel, shipping finished goods to customers,
identifying new and loyal customers, managing the manufacturing process,
quality control and testing, paying bills, and planning.

17. * eCommerce may also be classified in two common ways: the first by
the type of participants (businesses, consumers or governments) is the
more common way; but a second classifies it by the types of activities
covered (make sales, provide services, buy materials, hire people etc.).
Classification by Participants
Under this classification, a company which sells goods to individuals is
called business to consumer (B2C) eCommerce.
Similarly a business selling goods or services to another
company or non-profit organization is said to be involved in Business to
business (B2B).

18. * eCommerce. Companies also have business dealings with
government agencies and this kind of eCommerce is known as
business to government (B2G).
* While consumers dealing with consumers in an online auction for
example are said to be involved in consumer to consumer (C2C)
eCommerce.
Classification by Activities
This scheme is organized around what the business activities are
designed to accomplish.
The way a company sets about its business is called its business
model. While this would defer from industry to industry and company
to company, they all must necessarily generate revenues and pay the
associated costs concerned.

19. In this classification, companies which find ways of enhancing their sales,
expanding their customer base, and streamlining the delivery of goods
and services are said to involve eCommerce in revenue model
processes.
* Those which employed Internet based systems to improve their
purchasing, hiring, receiving, and manufacturing processes are said to
involve eCommerce in their operational model processes.
* The main expected benefit of eCommerce is to finally contribute to
increased revenue while helping in reducing operational costs. This way,
eCommerce is able to reduce the transaction costs involved in doing
business in order to enable a company to create a competitive
advantage over another in its domain.

20. Revenue Models for eCommerce
There are several ways in which revenue can be generated on the web.
Online Catalog
* Companies have started enhancing or completely replacing their
mail order catalogs with much more flexible online catalogs.
* Companies which have no real physical stores and do business only
through the web are referred to as dot com companies. Probably the most
famous of these is Amazon.com – the largest (virtual) bookstore in the
world.

22. Advertising and Subscription
* Successful websites, web portals, web directories, information gateways
and search engines are often more successful in attracting larger
numbers of potential customers and therefore market themselves as the
best places for advertisers.
For example, Google uses a creative way of using targeted advertising by
returning paid-for links relevant to a given web search at the top or side of
the list of resulting web links.
* Charging for subscription is another way to generate revenue especially
in areas where advertisements are felt to be intrusive and detrimental to a
neutral view of the material presented.

23. Advertising and Subscription
* Radio and TV channels such as the BBC were able to avoid
advertisements by using a subscription model for their services.
* Similarly many scholarly works require subscription rather than
rely on advertising to fund their operations.
* In practice however many businesses employ a hybrid approach
combining
advertisement and subscription in creative ways. The Yahoo! web
directory/portal for instance provides many services including email
and games free of charge based on advertising revenue but also
offers enhanced services based on subscription.
* Another popular subscription-based revenue model is to charge
occasional
visitors a premium for individual content or services but offer same
at lower rates to subscribers.

24. Direct Fee Model
* In this model, a fee is charged for a service provided and still attracts
customers since physical travel is avoided.
* This last concept leads to the idea of micro payments wherein the cost
of a full product or service is shared among large numbers of users by
breaking it into smaller sized components, each of which is charged only
a small fee. Examples of this are where libraries or bookstores can charge
on a per page basis or movies can be charged on a per-view basis.
* One of the more innovative eCommerce applications is the Online
Auction. Ebay is the best known of these and has its own set of rules for
bidding. It also has created value-addition by providing ways of building
trust among the community of buyers and sellers. Many of these sites
also provide automated agents which can be instructed by the bidder to
place bids in a way that he or she desires.

26. Optimizing Operational Costs and Efficiency
The other way in which to employ eCommerce in a business is to aim to
reduce operational costs and increase efficiency. This is done by Internet
enabling internal operations of the company.
* Frequently Asked Question (FAQ)
* Intranets and Extranets (Package Tracking system-DHL,UPS,FedEx)
* Profile

27. Issues Confronting eCommerce
•Primarily among the issues needing to be dealt with in an eCommerce
environment are the two consumer issues: transaction security which
includes both the reliability of the seller and the security of the payment,
and violation of privacy by which is meant the possibility of other parties
accessing personal information which is necessitated in any transaction.
•* In order to address these issues an intermediary generically known as
an assurance provider needs to be part of the transaction. VeriSign is one
of the best known such trust providers.(Certification Authority (CA))
Security Implimentations: Https
SSL-Secure Socket Layer
Payment Methods
Credit cards, PayPal and electronic wallets
Visa/Master cards(SET Protocol)

31. The International nature and scope of eCommerce has its own
issues in practice.
Two of the most common ones are the need for multilingual
support and the need to adhere to national and regional laws
and taxes.

32. eGovernment
* eGovernment is the common name by which state sector
computerization is now known.
* It can be said very broadly the application of information and
communication technology (ICT) to improve the effectiveness and
efficiency of government services including but not limited to the
legislature, judiciary and administration.
* Since the primary recipients are either citizens, other government
agencies or businesses
* eGovernment services have typically been divided into Government-to-
Consumer (G2C), Government-to- Government (G2G) and Government-
to-Business (G2B)

33. Informational Services
The most basic of eGovernment services is the provision of information in
static forms such as circulars, newsletters, application forms and notices.
Interactive Services
At this next level of maturity, some level of interactivity is provided
through email or the filling of web forms. However, owing to the lack of
access in many areas of the country, this service cannot be truly said to
constitute transactions with the government.
Transactional Services
This is a fairly mature level of eGovernment where real transactions
between the government and its citizens, suppliers and other state agencies
take place via the ICT infrastructure, usually the Web. In order to support
this, state institutions would usually require their own IT divisions.

34. Integrated Services
At this level, the government information technology infrastructure is
mature, stable and pervasive. At this level also, internal systems of the
government are seemlessly integrated with the external services made
available to the consumer - be it citizen, business or other state agencies.
A Network Readiness Index (NRI), e-Readiness Ranking, and other rating
schemes have been proposed as a means to rate the potential for
countries to exploit the opportunities offered by information and
communications technology.
Networked Readiness Index (NRI) measures the potential for
countries to exploit the opportunities offered by information and
communications technology.

38. eEntertainment
The kinds of entertainment online include, listening to
music, watching video, playing games, following radio and television
schedules, and following entertainment news.
Computer Games (Online)
Radio, TV and Movie Listings – BBC, CNN
Personal Networking – LinkedIn
Online Magazines
Online News

39. Online Banking
echanneling
WebCasting

42. WebCasting
A webcast is a media presentation distributed over the Internet
using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to
many simultaneous listeners/viewers. A webcast may either be distributed
live or on demand. Essentially, webcasting is “broadcasting” over the
Internet.

43. The Web as a Library
* The entire web can be regarded as a massive library of information. Its
catalog consists of the large web directories and search engines.
* The web also supplies a user friendly interface to some of the best
libraries in the world.
* One of the most comprehensive physical libraries to have a web
interface is the Library of Congress. Apart from containing the largest
single collection of books, journals and periodicals in the world, its web
interface also provides links to many other library websites.
* The Internet Public Library on the other hand is a completely virtual
library which provides an easily accessible interface to books around the
world. Another valuable source of information is the Encyclopedia.

45. * Arguably the most dramatic phenomenon in this sphere is the
emergence of the global free encyclopedia, Wikipedia, which leverages
the voluntary human effort of tens of thousands of people around the
world and a community quality control model to produce volumes of high
quality, up to date encyclopedic content, completely free of charge.

47. Platforms for Journaling and Collaboration
* The phenomena such as journaling through blogs (short for web logs),
collaborative work using wikis, group content creation and editing via
content management systems, and tracking web content updates through
RSS.
* One of the most powerful expressions of the rich collaboration
environment provided by the Internet is the advent and rapid spread of
Open Source Software.

48. Blogging
A blog is a personal journal published on the World Wide Web consisting
of discrete entries ("posts") typically displayed in reverse chronological
order so the most recent post appears first.
Wikis
What blogging is to individual writing, wiki is for collaborative authoring .
Without doubt the most powerful demonstration of what wiki-based
collaborative authoring is capable of achieving is seen in the global free
encyclopedia, the Wikipedia.

52. Content Management Systems
* Just as Wikis allow collaborative authoring of documents and content,
Content Management Systems (CMSs) allow multiple parties to jointly
create, edit and manage website content.
•Some widely used CMSs underlying many well known websites include,
Drupal, Zope, Joomla (formerly Mambo) and WordPress. CMSs have
made website maintenance much easier to manage.

53. Really Simple Syndication (RSS)
RSS Rich Site Summary (originally RDF Site Summary, often
dubbed Really Simple Syndication) is a family of web feed formats
used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries,
news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.
An RSS document (which is called a "feed", "web feed",or
"channel") includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as
publishing dates and authorship.
RSS feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content
automatically. A standardized XML file format allows the information
to be published once and viewed by many different programs. They
benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from
favorite websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one
place.

54. Telecommuting
Telecommuting, which is called also teleworking, is working from home
using a computer connected to the work place. People who do this kind of
work are called telecommuters.
Telecommuting refers more specifically to work undertaken at a location
that reduces commuting time. These locations can be inside the home or
at some other remote workplace, which is facilitated through a broadband
connection, computer or phone lines.
A frequently repeated motto is that "work is something you do, not
something you travel to." Variations of this include: "Work is
something we DO, not a place that we GO and "Work is what we
do, not where we are."

55. Politics and Activism
Internet activism is the use of electronic communication
technologies such as social media,
especially Twitter and Facebook, YouTube, e-mail,
and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster
communications by citizen movements and the delivery of local
information to a large audience. Internet technologies are used for
cause-related fundraising, community building, lobbying, and
organizing.
The Internet brings new dimensions and power to activism; we must
not be naïve about the power of networked technologies.
Eg:
Arab Spring of 2011, Wikileaks

56. Politics and Activism
The two Arab countries in which dictators were deposed without civil war
in 2011 were Tunisia and Egypt both of which have relatively high rates of
Internet penetration and social media use compared to many other parts
of the Middle East and North Africa. the revolutions of Tunisia and Egypt
did not spring from Twitter and Facebook. Movements for political change
in these countries developed and matured over the course of a decade;
then when the right moment came activists were in a position to take
advantage of them. Activists experimented with networked technologies,
honed their messages over time, built support networks, and generally
worked to use Internet and mobile platforms to their maximum advantage.
They also spent a decade building offline relationships both nationally and
regionally and honing offline protest skills. The revolutions’ successes in
Tunisia and Egypt.

57. Transparency of filtering or blocking activities
Among the countries that filter or block online content, few openly
admit to or fully disclose their filtering and blocking activities.
For example:
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are among the few
states that publish detailed information about their filtering practices and
display a notification to the user when attempting to access a blocked
website.
In contrast, countries such as China and Tunisia send users a false error
indication. China blocks requests by users for a banned website at
the router level and a connection error is returned, effectively preventing
the user's IP address from making further HTTP requests for a varying
time, which appears to the user as "time-out" error with no explanation.
Tunisia has altered the block page functionality of SmartFilter, the
commercial filtering software it uses, so that users attempting to access
blocked websites receive a fake "File not found" error page.

58. Transparency of filtering or blocking activities
In Uzbekistan users are frequently sent block pages stating that the
website is blocked because of pornography, even when the page
contains no pornography. Uzbeki ISPs may also redirect users'
request for blocked websites to unrelated websites, or sites similar
to the banned websites, but with different information.

59. Internet Activists
Julian Assange - Wikileaks
Jimmy Wales - Wikipedia
Jacob Appelbaum - Tor Project

61. Censorship
Internet censorship is the control or suppression of what can be
accessed, published, or viewed on the internet. It may be carried out by
governments, private organizations at the behest of government,
regulators, or on their own initiative. Individuals and organizations may
engage in self-censorship for moral, religious, or business reasons, to
conform to societal norms, due to intimidation, or out of fear of legal or
other consequences.

62. Censorship
Eg: Internet Censorship in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka is listed as a country "under surveillance" by Reporters
Without Borders in 2011.
Several political and news websites, including tamilnet.com and
lankanewsweb.com, have been blocked within the country. Tamilnet has
been producing news about the Sri Lankan civil war, focusing in the north
and the east of the country, and is seen by the government as a Pro-
LTTE news website
The Sri Lanka courts have ordered hundreds of adult sites blocked to
"protect women and children"
In October and November 2011 the Sri Lankan Telecommunication
Regulatory Commission blocked the five websites,
www.lankaenews.com, srilankamirror.com, srilankaguardian.com,
paparacigossip9.com, and www.lankawaynews.com, for what the
government alleges as publishing reports that amount to "character
assassination and violating individual privacy”. The five sites have
published material critical of the government and alleged corruption and
malfeasance by politicians.

63. Censorship
Eg: Internet Censorship in China
China is listed as a country "Enemies of the Internet "
by Reporters Without Borders in 2011.
The Chinese government built the world’s most sophisticated
system of filtering and blocking for overseas websites, including
most famously most Google-owned services, Facebook, and
Twitter. At the same time, the government encouraged the
development of a robust domestic Internet and telecommunications
industry so that Chinese technology users can enjoy an abundant
variety of domestically run social media platforms, online
information services, Internet and mobile platforms, and devices
produced by Chinese companies. By imposing strong political and
legal liability on Internet intermediaries, the government forced
companies many financed by Western capital not only to foot the
bill for much of the regime’s censorship and surveillance needs, but
to do much of the actual work.

66. Blocking Web Site related to
Political blogs and web sites, Sex and erotic, prostitution,
and pornographic sites
Child pornography, Gay and Lesbian sites, Sites seen as
promoting illegal drug use
Gambling sites, Sites encouraging or inciting violence, Sites
promoting criminal activity
Sites that include hate speech - Nazi and similar websites –
particularly in France and Germany
pro–North Korean sites by South Korea]
The Muslim Brotherhood in some countries in the Middle East
Wikileaks,
Social networks (e.g. Facebook and MySpace), YouTube
.