Dear Label_Name,

Greetings! I hope you are well.

I am writing on behalf of an international publishing house, Science and Education Publishing, USA (http://www.sciepub.com).

Science and Education Publishing (SciEP) is a multidisciplinary open access publisher of Journals covering the fields of Science, Technology and Medicine. All SciEP publications are subject to high-quality peer review, editorial and production processes and are freely available online.

Welcome to the April, 2013 edition of SciEP newsletter, providing monthly summaries of articles on science & education related topics of interest to scientist and professionals. The mission of our journals is to provide an open access forum for publishing new findings on issues pertinent to scientific and academic field. We also invite you to submit original research papers, review articles, short reports, or case studies are considered for publication in our Multidisciplinary Journals.

American Journal of Public Health Research
DOI: 10.12691/ajphr-1-1-3

The Implementation of a Tele-Homecare System with Service Oriented Architecture and HL7 Message Transmission Standard
Ching-Sung Wang

American Journal of Medical and Biological Research
DOI: 10.12691/ajmbr-1-1-2

The Influence of Ethanol on Pyruvate Kinases Activity in Vivo, in Vitro, in Silico
Lelevich Sergey Vladimirovich, Khrustalev Vladislav Victorovich, Barkovsky Eugene Victorovich, Shedogubova Tatyana Aleksandrovna

American Journal of Medical Sciences and Medicine
DOI: 10.12691/ajmsm-1-1-1

Clinical and Histological Features in Wegener Granulomatosis
Li Cavoli Gioacchino, Passantino Rita, Bono Luisa, Tortorici Calogera, Ferrantelli Angelo, Giammarresi Carlo, Rotolo Ugo

American Journal of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology
DOI: 10.12691/ajidm-1-1-2

The Curse of Lymphatic Filariasis: Would the Continual Use of Diethylcarbamazine Eliminate this Scourge in Papua New Guinea?
Anne Lanham, Lillian Mwanri

We have released issues of some journals on February 2013.
American Journal of Public Health Research
American Journal of Medical Sciences and Medicine
American Journal of Medical and Biological Research
American Journal of Pharmacological Sciences
American Journal of Clinical Medicine Research
American Journal of Nursing Research
American Journal of Cancer Prevention
American Journal of Medicine Studies
American Journal of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology
American Journal of Cardiovascular Disease Research
American Journal of Biomedical Research
American Journal of Mechanical Engineering
American Journal of Microbiological Research
Journal of Preventive Medicine
American Journal of Food and Nutrition
American Journal of Hypertension Research
American Journal of Sports Science and Medicine
Journal of Cancer Research and Treatment
American Journal of Zoological Research
Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology
American Journal of Microbiological Research
Biomedical Science and Engineering

We are pleased to announce that submissions are now being accepted for peer review for all the journals across all our subject areas in SciEP.

Please submit your manuscript via our online submission system:
http://www.sciepub.com/author/signin

To unsubscribe from our mailing list, please click on the following link: unsubscribe

I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,

David Rain
Email:join@sciepub.com
Science and Education Publishing (http://www.sciepub.com)

Facebook and Its Usage Pattern, a Case Study of Students at Central University of Kashmir

Fayaz Ahmad Nika, Shakeel Ahmad Sofi*

Research Scholar Department of Management Studies Central University Of Kashmir

Abstract: The life is changing ever so fast and people are connected to each other in a much different way .Social Websites are also helping people remain connected with their near and dear ones. There are number of social websites including the famous www.facebook.com, Twitter, Whatsap, Wechat etc. It may be helping people a lot but there are whooping drawbacks and serious issues as well .As mentioned above there are number of such social websites but this study is limited to only Facebook and its objective is to analyze how people perceive Facebook as Social Netework and what is its impact on consumer .The population for the study has been the students of Zainakote campus Central University of Kashmir. The study has shown that people mostly use facebook for flirting purpose or to enjoy with their close friends.

Keywords: facebook, messages, advertising, intensions, need and perceptions

Received March 13, 2014; Revised March 20, 2014; Accepted March 23, 2014

Citation: Fayaz Ahmad Nika, Shakeel Ahmad Sofi, Facebook and Its Usage Pattern, a Case Study of Students at Central University of Kashmir. Journal of Business and Management Sciences, 2 (1). 21-25. January 2014. doi:10.12691/jbms-2-1-3

1. Introduction

To be in contact with near and dear ones is human nature, people in earlier times would require months and days to meet and talk with their dear ones but such is not the case in present times as everything got changed due to arrival of internet and IT Revolution. An individual just needs one click and the world’s information is under his finger tips but whether this has led to destruction of culture and value system, it needs to be analyzed. There is common saying now a days that internet has created challenge to social life, moral values and with the passage of time there are whooping changes in social life and are increasing day by day. There are number of questions that one needs to clarify, What was the main goal of launching Internet? What is the real purpose of social websites? Does these social websites lead to Social Engagement or Social Disengagement?, are these social websites there to divert youth from their career? Are these social websites there to divert individuals from their religion? Do these Social Websites lead to Value creation? How simple or difficult are these questions one needs to dig in deep inside and analyse them as well. But one thing is clear that the life has changed a lot and changes in social relations, social life are at peak. There are number of Social websites and few of them have been discussed below:

Youtube: YouTube is a video sharing website where an individual needs to create an account for uploading videos and software like Internet Download Manager for downloading any video. It was created by three former PayPal employees (PayPal is a global business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet). Apart from uploading and downloading people can view and comment on videos. Here on YouTube any one can upload any content and that can be viewed by any one as well. There have been lot of controversies regarding YouTube for people uploading any kind of content on this website which can include extreme nudity and in against to other religion as well. People especially youth find it easy source for downloading and uploading inflammatory videos.

Twitter: Twitter is an online and service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 , known as tweets”. Twitter was created in March 2006 by and by July, the social networking site was launched. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with over users as of 2012, generating over 340 million tweets daily and handling over 1.6 per day. Since its launch, Twitter has become one of the ten most visited websites on the Internet, and has been described as "the of the ." Unregistered users can read tweets, while registered users can post tweets through the website interface, SMS, or a range of for mobile devices. Twitter Inc. is based in , with additional servers and offices in , , and [1].

Flickr: Flickr (stylized as flickr) is an and website, suite, and that was created by in 2004 and acquired by in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by to host images that they embed in blogs and . Yahoo reported in June 2011 that Flickr had a total of 51 million registered members and 80 million unique visitors. In August 2011 the site reported that it was hosting more than 6 billion images and this number continues to grow steadily according to reporting sources. Photos and videos can be accessed from Flickr without the need to register an account but an account must be made in order to upload content onto the website. Registering an account also allows users to create a profile page containing photos and videos that the user has uploaded and also grants the ability to add another Flickr user as a contact. For mobile users, Flickr has an official for , PlayStation Vita, and operating systems [1].

MySpace (previously stylized as MySpace and My_____) is a with a strong music emphasis owned by Specific Media LLC and pop music singer and actor . MySpace was launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in . In June 2012, MySpace had 25 million unique U.S. visitors. MySpace was founded in 2003 and was acquired by in July 2005 for $580 million. From 2005 until early 2008, MySpace was the most visited social networking site in the world, and in June 2006 surpassed as the most visited website in the United States. In April 2008, MySpace was overtaken by in the number of unique worldwide visitors, and was surpassed in the number of unique U.S. visitors in May 2009, though MySpace generated $800 million during the 2008 fiscal year. Since then, the number of MySpace users has declined steadily in spite of several redesigns. As of February 2013 , MySpace was ranked 220 by total web traffic and 133 in the United States. MySpace had a significant influence in pop culture and music and created a gaming platform that launched the successes of Zynga and Rock You, among others. The site also started the trend of creating unique for companies and artists. In June 2009, Myspace employed approximately 1,600 workers. Since then the company has undergone several rounds of layoffs and by June 2011, MySpace had reduced its staff to around 200. In June 2011, Specific Media Group and jointly purchased the company for approximately $35 million [1].

Orkut: Orkut is a website that is owned and operated by . The service is designed to help users meet new and old friends and maintain existing relationships. The website is named after its creator, Google employee . Although Orkut is less popular in the United States than its competitors and , it is one of the most visited websites in India and Brazil. As of October 2011, 59.1% of Orkut's users are from Brazil, followed by India with 27.1% and Japan with 6.7%. Originally hosted in California, in August 2008 Google announced that Orkut would be fully managed and operated in Brazil, by Google Brazil, in the city of . This was decided due to the large Brazilian user base and growth of legal issues. As of October 2012, traffic ranked Orkut.com 746th and Orkut. com. br 738th in the world; the web site currently has over 33 million active users worldwide [1].

Facebook: Facebook is the leading social network now a days with 1.11 billion (active users March 2013) all over the world. It was founded in February 2004 by Mark Zukerberg and his colleagues and was initially limited to Harvard Students but due to its features which we shall be discussing later it has now users from all the world. It has become lifeline to most of the people be it small kids, adoles, adults or even old age people and to people from all corners be it professions, Businessmen, Labourers, Students, Artisans or Artists. People can’t sleep before they log on to facebook and when they get up early in the morning, most of the things they do first is post something on Facebook. This is altogether a new beginning, it is circulating as blood in our Veins and it has positioned itself in such a way that people find it hard not to use facebook.

To start with Facebook user is required to register himself/herself and is required to provide personal details which are not compulsory apart from valid name and Date of Birth, after registering user can enjoy Facebook messages, video calling, on line chat, User can also form groups which are important to him/her like Professional Groups, group belonging to his schooling, Group belonging to his social life and various other groups as well. One can search for his childhood friend wow how great ? one can chat with a person who is in other extreme corner of world any time anywhere and now companies are charging very minimal for facebook and users especially children are finding it very easy and cheap as well. Apart from this, advertising agencies and other recruitment agencies are finding it easy to advertise through Facebook, it is fast source of news and information on facebook spreads like anything and in recent past, it was banned for some time for spreading happenings in Valley during turmoil 2008 and 2010, but the important aspect of Facebook which needs to be analysed is what is its impact on generations, if we say facebook has so many advantages like it is a source of information and Knowledge, it brings people together, they also say religion is spreading through Facebook, well how far it is true we will try to justify it through research. Besides it, Facebook has been criticized for online privacy, child safety and hate speech and for promoting controversial content and controversial topics, for any society it is a grave issue to see children involved in such a behaviour which will only bring curse to their career and when they should have been deep focused on study instead they have hanged themselves with Facebook, it is really serious issue and it needs some thoughts, we may require intellectuals to come forward and set strategy aforth so that we may be able to save these talented young children of our Nation because this Facebook has really turned out to be book without which these people (Which includes all most all generations) cannot survive, when it really should have been book from which individuals could have been benefited like what we, our teachers, our elders used to do and still do, as they would sleep while having book in his/her hands and they would have tea while reading a book but it has changed as people now mostly youth and children sleep while chatting on facebook and first thing they do early in the morning is to see whether any one is online or is there any notification or message. This whole story leaves serious questions about Value Creation which forms basic goal of major organizations and we fear Facebook does not consider Value Creation at all.

But never the less Facebook is cheap source of communication with being fast as well and has number of features which you just need to like and you will automatically get information about that source like there are pages created by company and news agency and whenever you login your facebook account, you will be able to see updates from such companies as well. On facebook there are number of religious pages operating and if users really focus on those statements updated by religious groups one could really get benefited here and hereafter. There are pages for unemployed people as well and these groups like Sarkari Naukri, Jobs in Srinagar don’t let their viewers to remain in darkness and update them continuously about latest positions available in different parts of world, So there are multitude benefits associated with Facebook but still one needs to think about its overall effects and outcome as well, well we have to come together and form joint strategy so as to get maximum benefits from this Internet and IT revolution.

2. Research Objectives

1. To study why people use Facebook.

2. To study whether commercial messages on Facebook create any interest on different customer groups.

3. To study whether messages of different kind create any kind of awareness and interest among different individuals.

4. To study perception of different customer groups towards Facebook in general.

3. Research Questions

H0: Both Male and Female will report same priority towards ads that come on Facebook.

H0: Educational Background is independent of perceptual difference towards facebook.

H0: Most of the customers do not know why they use facebook.

4. Research Design

4.1. Source of Data

The source of Data used in this study is primary and was obtained from students at Zainakote Campus of Central University of Kashmir being enrolled for various courses. The instrument was developed which consisted of 21 variables including Advertisements on Facebook, Love messages on Facebook, Religious Messages on Facebook, Facebook Usage Reasons, Perception towards Facebook and Demographics.

Sampling Size, Tools and Analysis:

n = 144

Here ‘n’ is sample size and sample includes students at Zainakote Campus enrolled for various courses like Economics, LLB, Management, Mathematics and Tourism Studies. Apart from Mean and percentages we have applied ANOVA in order to test hypothesis.

4.2. Results

H0: Educational Background is independent of perceptual difference towards facebook.

Here different customers are students from different specialization like Masters in Tourism, Maths, LLB, MBA and ANOVA analysis clearly indicates that people show perceptual difference towards facebook. Value of probability 0.005 being less than significance level of 0.05 means we have to reject null hypothesis and accordingly alternative hypothesis which is different customer groups do show perceptual difference towards Facebook is accepted. Futther we can verify it where does difference lie as is indicated by below frequency tables.

Statement x : Whether facebook has increased social evils?

Here in response to the statement x we can see that 12.5% strongly Agree, 33.3% Agree, 20.1% have not decided while 22.2 disagree and 11.8% Strongly Disagree. So we if further analyze it 34% are on the disapproval side while as 46.8 are on approval side that facebook has increased social evils.

Statement Y. Whether Facebook has made it easy to chat with unknown people

Here most of the people(80.5) are on approval side that is Facebook has made it easy to chat with people like girl friend or boyfriend, even it has removed the communication gap rather is facilitating people to chat with unknown people of same or opposite gender which is serious issue and needs to be addressed as well.

Statement z. Facebook is hindrance to my Studies and daily work

To determine whether people agree with the statement that Facebook is hindrance to their studies, we have calculated frequencies shown in table under statement Z where it is clear that 59.7% agree with it while as 27.8 disagree with it but since most of people agree with the statement we can conclude that Facebook if not used properly does become hindrance for studies for most of the young and college students.

H0: Both Male and Female will report same priority towards ads that come on Facebook.

To test this hypothesis we have again conducted one way ANOVA whose results and figures are given below:

Here the value of probability being less than significance level of 0.05 implies we have to reject null hypothesis of equal means and accordingly we will have to accept alternative hypothesis which is that both Male and Female report different priority towards ads that come on Facebook. So the preference varies from an individual to individual, it may be top priority for one to view job ads where as it may be Matrimonial ads or it may be mobile ads for others depending upon the requirement of an individual.

5. The Question of Why People Use Facebook

People differ in perception and so does in personality, they have different choices as well and there could be different reasons as to why people use facebook like some may use facebook for time pass, some use it for flirting or some people even don’t use it, let us see what statistics has to say about it.

Figure: Why people use facebook

Using the statement of questionnaire as to why people use facebook we have calculated frequencies which are shown in figure above and it is clear why people use facebook, here 0 represents people not having Facebook account and its only 4.2 percent of the sample while as most of the people like it to enjoy with close friends and it is about 49.3 % with (Flirting), 22.9% being second highest preference and two important aspects of Knowledge and Religion being on lower side with 6.2 and 5.6 percent respectively.

6. Recommendations

Facebook mania is on ever increasing speed and people can’t sleep or even can’t eat till they log in and see what are latest updates on Facebook, the lifestyle has completely changed and people have defined new relationships and new ways of living with facebook. We can’t deny advantages of Facebook, it is really delightful to see your childhood friends on this network where you can share with them anywhere any time, you could see the difference in communication as facebook has almost decreased the communication gap. Though having multitude benefits but there are serious concerns as well and as mentioned above in results most of the people have agreed and they do recognize that Facebook has created social evils and has made it easy to engage into such type of relations which are undesirable that do nothing but are hindrances to one’s career. One important concept which every one ties with, is sustainable development which is we must keep something for next generations while utilizing resources efficiently and effectively but the important element of Sustainable development is our customer and if that is affected by our business then we will have to think about it, people need to be aware about the impact of facebook on young people, we need to come forward and form strategies to have better utilization of this Social Network.

We don’t derecognize the important aspects of Social Network as there is tremendous scope to acquire knowledge, we cannot underestimate the importance of services such as Economic Times of India, Harvard Business Review, Research Journals and many other services created for the promotion of Intellectual Ideas and for these services you are not required to pay huge charges infact some companies like Airtel are providing it for free. But nevertheless it has changed the life style altogether and there are chances that you will be persuaded Subliminally where you are not aware about changes taking place in and around you and that is what we see now a days, the vulgarity among youth of both the sexes and even these young people use facebook for nothing but just for flirting purpose and they themselves are found using Facebook continuously which does affect eyes as well which is a part of physical body, but from psychological perspective it leaves deep marks on the mind of young generation whereby his/her behaviour is found to be corrupted towards social evils so it’s better to come forward and formulate strategies whereby our youth will utilize this invention to greater advantage and here are some of the strategies put forward by researcher:

1. To make better utilization of Internet and particularly social websites we must educate parents about its functioning as whole and parents should ensure imbibing moral education to their wards and also at times keep vigil on their children to see how they are using facebook.

2. Counseling centres should be thrown open where young people should not only be guided about their career opportunities but should be encouraged to use facebook for overall personality development and should be motivated about to promote such ideas among other young and brilliant minds.

3. State authorities should come forward and help remove social evils existing in the society. They have technology and they have force which if utilized in constructive way can help in the development of society. Let us remind ourselves that there has been generational shift in social transact, not only people have changed but so has changed their thought process and who could not have thought that one would kill his/her friend only because the victim was having relationship with a girl which didn’t suit the killer, yes this is what happened before few years in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir when a young boy from Maisuma Srinagar was brutally killed in Illahibagh Buchpora by his friends and whole case was linked to facebook.

Our heart goes for society and people around whole world and we believe if National and International authorities would come forward and utilize their force in befitting way then we would certainly find world approaching towards one peaceful nation because our State, National and International governments have been extremely lenient and have not pondered upon the social issues and if they continue such approach then instead of Knowledge economy we may have the deficiency of the same which will ultimately lead to social sustainability problems.

References

[1]   | Source: www.wikipedia.org/
[2]   | Kazeniac, Andy (February 9, 2009). "Social Networks: Facebook Takes Over Top Spot, Twitter Climbs". Compete Pulse blog. Retrieved February 17, 2009.
[3]   | Locke, Laura (July 17, 2007). "The Future of Facebook". Time (New York). Retrieved November 13, 2009.
[4]   | Tabak, Alan J. (February 9, 2004). "Hundreds Register for New Facebook Website". The Harvard Crimson (Cambridge, MA).
[5]   | McGirt, Ellen (May 1, 2007). "Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg: Hacker".
[6]   | Graham, Jefferson (27 February 2006). "Flickr of idea on a gaming project led to photo website". USA Today.
[7]   | Kaplan, Katherine (November 19, 2003). "Facemash Creator Survives Ad Board". The Harvard Crimson (Cambridge, MA). Retrieved February 5, 2009.
[8]   | Hoffman, Claire (June 28, 2008). "The Battle for Facebook". Rolling Stone (New York).
[9]   | Graham, Jefferson (4 May 2007). "Yahoo Photos going dark as Flickr shines on". USA Today.
[10]   | Jardin, Xeni (March 13, 2007). "Orkut and Brazilian Laws". Boingboing.net.
[11]   | Couch, L.L., & Jones, W.H. (1997). Measuring levels of trust. Journal of Research in Personality
[12]   | Christofides, E. & Desmarais, S. (under review). An integrated theory of privacy for the modern world.
[13]   | Boyd, d.m. (2007). Why youth (heart) social network sites: The role of networked publics in teenage social life. In: Buckingham D, ed, McArthur foundation series on digital learning – youth, identity, and digital media volume. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.