A) Look at the logos below and discuss the questions in pairs.

(илл. 8.7.1-8.7.5 под иллюстрациями цифры – facebook - 700,000,000 twitter - 200,000,000, linkedIn - 100,000,000, My space -80,500,000, google plus - 32,000,000)

1. What do the logos present? What do you know about these services? Do you know any similar websites? Can you translate the names of these social networks into your language? Are they appropriate names for the services they provide? What do the numbers under the logos mean? What is the most popular social network?

2. Look through the article below. What is it about?

Making Friends in Social Networking

By PHILIPP LAAGE

On Facebook everyone is a friend, at least that’s what people call each other, but can an adolescent understand and cope with this?

The experts say yes. Social networks play an important role in forming friendships among young people by making common experiences visible to everyone participating. Outside the Internet, no-one sends a request to friend someone. But at social networking sites such as Facebook people work hard at collecting friends.

To think that young people cannot differentiate between the two is a prejudice, said Professor Jaap Denissen of Humboldt University in Berlin. “Fourteen-year-olds can do it much better than we think they can because they have grown up with the internet.’’

The notion that youths communicate primarily with strangers is as outdated as the belief that a high level of internet use causes social isolation, said psychologist Denissen. People who use the internet a lot are in their “real lives’’ more social than those who aren’t heavy users of the internet.

The basic needs of young people haven’t changed: “They form cliques and fit themselves into scenes and they do that as well in social networks.’’

Jan-Hinrik Schmidt, a social network researcher at the Hans Bredow Institute in Hamburg, said young people today have a much larger stage than in the past.

“Parties, vacations, concerts – all of these are permanently stored in photographs and other multimedia,’’ Schmidt said. Friends can continuously comment on the goings-on. “Networks such as Facebook become the collective consciousness of a clique.’’

Social networks deliver a social confirmation that the group belongs together. Young people used to sign each other’s backpacks to openly signal that they belonged together, Schmidt said. This is much easier to achieve using Facebook, but the motivation is the same.

“The photo album from a vacation taken together should express the friendship between the people involved and show that they do cool things together,’’ he added.

Juliane Stopfer, a psychologist at the university of Mainz, sees a practical use beyond keeping the memories of shared experiences.

“We can maintain contacts with friends who live far away, as well as strengthen these ties or rediscover them,’’ said Stopfer. “We learn through things like photos from a family vacation that there are sides of people who are near to us that were previously concealed. ’’

Adolescence, however, means change. A 15-year-old girl might write “best friends forever’’ on a girlfriend’s wall, but in reality, friends do fall out, relationships split up, said Schmidt. Some things published in the internet stay around for a long time. “How we will deal with these things is still open,’’ he said.

Denissen expects things to change in social networking, particularly with the openness of some of the communications. He said in the future people will share some messages and photos with family only and others with friends. The new Google+ social network, for example, separates friendships into circles. That sounds a lot like the way things are structured in real life.

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