Page 70 - Prime Time 1-5 Leaflet

1 a) How do you communicate with your friends?
Do you use social networking sites such as
Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc?
b) How do social networking sites work?
Listen, read and check.
social networking site, connection, user-friendly
interface, post, profile, login name, personalise,
contact, browse, interact, straightforward,
expand, community, media, blogger, trend,
independent, promote, tight-knit
Check these words
i Curricular: ICT
38
2
c) Use the words in the box to
tell your partner about social networks.
Check these words
b) Match the highlighted words with their meanings:
depending on, let, communicate , fashion, make , starting ,
search, make bigger. 4 In small groups, find out
more information about a social
network e.g. Twitter. Present
your information to the class.
ICT
3 Why do
you think social networks have
become so popular? In three
minutes, write a few
sentences. Tell another group
or the class.
Think!
Do you use Facebook, MySpace, Twitter,
Friendster or Linkedin? If so, then you are
part of a social network. Social networking
sites allow us to see our social connections.
We can see our friends and their friends
through pictures and links in a user-friendly
interface.
When you create a profile on a social networking
site, you open up a huge range of possible social
connections. You can look up old friends, make new
friends and share music, photos and videos with
them. You can also join groups based on your
interests or hobbies, favourite TV shows or music.
Setting up a social networking account is simple. You
just create and post a personal profile. For this you
need a login name, password and an email account.
Then you add some personal information such as
name, age, sex, location, interests, etc. You can also
add a photo of yourself. You can personalise your
profile and share as much information about yourself
as you want. You can also control who sees your
profile. For example, you can make sure that you only
allow the friends that you have added to your
network to see it. The next step is to search the
network for your contacts, browse for new ones and
add them to your network. You can invite offline
friends to join by email or search for friends who are
already signed up by name, school, or workplace.
Then you can search your friends’ connections for
anyone else you’d like to add to your network.
Different social networking sites allow people to
interact in different ways. There are straightforward
sites that allow you to expand your personal
community such as Facebook. Then there are ones
that involve media sharing, such as YouTube,
where members upload and look at other people’s
pictures and videos. There are also ones that
specialise in sharing music, such as Last.FM, and
finally, ones that allow bloggers to form online
communities, such as Livejournal.
The latest trend in social networking is to create your
own independent social network. Companies do this
to promote their brand and individuals can do it to
create a very tight-knit community.
2 a) Read again and answer the questions.
1 What is the purpose of social networking sites?
2 What kinds of things can you do when you create a profile?
3 How do you set up a social networking account?
4 How can you personalise your profile?
5 How do you build up your list of friends?
6 What different kinds of social network sites are there?
7 Why are some companies creating their own social networks?