Social Networking is very beneficial in various ways. Sites like Facebook, allow us to keep in touch with friends and family even if they're miles away from us. Other photo-sharing sites allow us to share videos and photos so that our loved ones can also be a part of our memories. Other things like job searching/recruiting are also done on social networking sites/apps. Additionally,businesses are able to advertise/sell their products and services to millions of consumers which is really cost-efficient.
A nice example of how social networks benefits society can be found in the article "In India, Using Facebook to Catch Scofflaw Drivers" by Heather Timmons. In this article, a Facebook page was created by traffic cops, which resulted in people taking and posting pictures of other drivers violating traffic rules. The idea of this Facebook page got a lot of positive feedback, since reporting of more and more traffic violations can mean less accidents and a better driving experience for all drivers.
As mentioned before, job searching/recruitment can become way more easier and faster with the help of social networking websites. The article "Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting" goes onto show how much more convenient it is to recruit potential employees on LinkedIn. Thanks to LinkIn, Professionals like Shally Steckerl can recruit people in just 30 minutes. Not only does it make recruitment much faster, but also helps hiring managers to narrow down searches by typing in keywords to find the employees right for the job.
With the pros, also comes the cons, which means there are definitely a "dark side" to social networking. A lot of people spend way too much time on these sites, missing out on real life experiences and moments. It's important for children to build the right social skills and they might be unable to do so if they spend most of their time using these technologies. Other things like loss of privacy and cyber bullying can occur. Technology is useful, but too much of it can be bad. From what I can see, technology is becoming a bigger part of our lives with each passing day, and I think it will evolve to become even more overwhelming to the point where people in the future no longer know how to interact with each other in person.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6522523&sc=emaf
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/technology/02traffic.html?ref=business
I agree with you about how the recruitment industry and the headhunting landscape had changed because of social media. However, I still think there is room for both approaches: the classic and the Linkedin one.
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