Abstract
With the advent and widespread use of information and communication technologies, the need for information has become part of the daily work of individuals. Recently, social networks are one of the most important topics in cyberspace. This study seeks to identify and rank the opportunities and threats of social media for the society. Three hundred seventy students active in social networks are selected by clustering sampling method. A conceptual model is developed based on the review of theoretical literature and five opportunities of social network including electronic learning, filling leisure time, organizing social groups, getting to know about diverse cultures, possibility of conversation, as well as five threats include sharing anti values, abusing, dissemination of misinformation, internet addiction, and malacious communication have significant effect on the students.
TopSocial media is a medium that is designed to interact and publish content on the Internet through social interaction, has a very high availability and use scalable publishing techniques in it. Social Media is an Internet-centric application that allows people to create and share concepts (Kaplan, 2010) Social media comes in a variety of forms, such as social networks, Internet forums, blogs, social blogs, microblogs, wikis, podcasts, images, videos. There were just very limited number of social network sites in the late 1990’s and users could only create personal profiles and connect with “friends” (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). Their technologies were Web 1.0, consisted as static web pages and file management. Around 2001, professional social network sites began to emerge and users could interact and collaborate with each other for business and professional purposes. Then, technologies of Web 2.0 created an online environment for sharing electronic media and content.