Social networking has been on the up rise through out the world in a very obvious fashion. Although many people use these networks to connect with friends and to share photos and videos, it has become very clear that these sites can be used in many other ways then the original sites intended.
An example of how one of these social networking sites was used in a different was the use of twitter during the re-election of President Mouhamad Ahmadbinejad. Twitter is a social network that allows the subscriber to post up to 140 characters in one “tweet” to update what you are doing at that very moment. This is something used by many celebrities for all there fans to follow. Although this was the original intent of the site, the people of Iran decided to use this social network to their advantage by organizing large protests during the re-election. Twitter was such a big part of these protests that the protests were eventually known as the “Twitter Revolution”.
The “Twitter Revolution” encouraged other countries to use social networks in similar ways. Ashwini Menen from the International Business Journal said:
“Facebook along with a host of other social networking sites like Twitter and YouTube, has been the backbone of the protests in Egypt; opposition leaders posted updates and called for a new wave of democracy to hit Egypt. Opposition leader Mohammad El Baradei for example used Twitter to respond to Mubarak’s speech the day before his resignation.”
This is a famous line that was said by the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, in the award winning movie The Social Network, “We don’t know what it can be, we don’t know what it will be.” This is showing that even the creators of these networks don’t know what the final uses of these sites are going to be. The just lay down the foundation of what it can be used for, and the rest is up to the subscribers.