The use of social media by criminal gangs Research Paper

The use of social media by criminal gangs - Research Paper Example The very basic, often considered as the pioneer, a text only social networking system was Six Degrees (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). Success of this free site did not go unnoticed and soon other enthusiastic companies came into play. MySpace was launched after this. In addition to the profile creation and connecting with different users of choice, myspace allowed users to change the layout of their profile as a direct reflection of their personality. Sharing and listening music was also added later. Myspace was one of the most popular websites ever launched though it has several problems like openness of profile to everyone in the network. The ease of finding other people in the network had influenced the stalker to harass the victims without minimal effort. Myspace’s problems pushed many users to visit a trendier and privacy concerned website, named Facebook. At the starting of the business, facebook was targeted to the young audience, but it is focused to a broader segment of users . Facebook tried to share more information about the people from their profile and they have changed their security settings numerous times. Continuous distraction of users by new messages, or any intimation has become an annoying factor. These drawbacks have shifted the site’s once loyal users to a different social networking environment. Twitter is the latest addition to this trend. Launched in 2006, twitter soon became successful because of their distraction free method of connecting with different users in the network just by posting the message. It is now integrated to many platforms, including mobile phones and different operating systems. Twitter is an instant success and the success of twitter inspired Google to launch their social networking website named Google+. The Company has registered more than 90 million users (Barnett, 2012) in a span of a few months and its contact management