Social Media and Even More Social Media
It is a matter of fact social media is becoming the de facto tool of communication today. But what exactly constitutes social media??? Well, it is a term which is loosely defined. To some, it is just a means of communication rather than using the traditional means of e-mail and the landline telephones, and to many, many others, it is a way of sharing one’s entire life, whether personal or professional. But to me, when I think of social media, the images of Facebook,Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, etc. all come to mind (in fact I have links to all of these on the tech writing website).
I view these all as social media “channels”. Meaning, just one line of communications for sharing something specific. But, when you lump all of this together, it is what is known (according to my definition once again) as a “social media community”. Now meaning, there are multiple channels hosted on a single repository from which one can leverage all types and kinds of communications with multiples of people, from all over the world. True, there are hundreds upon hundreds of social media sites out there, but there are not as many which host the social community forum.
Probably the best one which comes to mind in this regard is “Ning.com”. Anyways, it is with this background in social media upon which I came across a Press Release which discusses in with context of Biometrics. The Biometrics Vendor mentioned in it is known as “Cognitec Systems.”
Here we go: “Nero Kwik Media is a free media management application that makes it quick and easy for consumers to find, organize, edit, play and share music, photos and video clips between a computer, tablets, mobile phones and online social networks . . . Cognitec’s face recognition technology is specifically used for Nero Kwik Faces which is an application used to automatically tag individual people or entire groups, allowing for easy indexing and searching of personal photo libraries. Users can edit, crop, and remove red eye from photos, create slideshows and instantly share them with friends via social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Flickr.” (SOURCE: http://www.findbiometrics.com/industry-news/i/8923/).
Final Thoughts On Today’s Posting
I should mention, that the social media Vendor described in this Posting, known as “Nero”, is a huge a dominant player in its field. For example, it has something like 300 million plus units sold worldwide. Also, as you can see from the above quote, it is Facial Recognition which is being used in this social media (or social community) example. When I first read came the Press Release, my first impression was that it was being used as a means of Security. No doubt all things related to social media are very popular, because not only are they mostly free, but it is virtually instantaneous communication.
So given this, Security, especially privacy becomes of paramount importance. There are countless numbers of stories how confidential and private information can be basically hacked into and stolen from these sites. But when I further read the Press Release, I was totally surprised and shocked to see that Facial Recognition technology is actually being used to help enhance the means of communications and sharing. The way this is happening is in regards to the indexing, cropping, and sharing of photos. To be honest, this is the first time I have seen Biometrics being used in this regard. But, despite all of these great advantages, there is one thing that does bother me.
This Biometrics Technology can also be used to tag people in photos, across the social media sites. Tagging is a very popular and very quick way to identify people in photographs, whether those people in the pictures like it or not, or even whether or not they give exclusive permission to be tagged. Tagging has caused tremendous uproar in the past, especially with regards to Facebook. As a result, this has caused a tremendous amount of concern for Security amongst all of the billions of people across the planet whom are in cyberspace communicating. So, here we now see a prime example of a Biometric Technology being used not only as a tool for enhancing the enjoyment of pictures, but which can also be used to potentially defeat its purpose as well.
What is even more ironic in my opinion is that here is a Security Technology which could even potentially cause severe Security breaches down the road. Just something to ponder upon. Personally, I think Biometrics would be a great tool for Security for the social media and social community sites. As for the tech writing website, yes I do plan to have a Biometrics Social Community at some point in time. So I don’t give out too many secrets away, it will be hosted on a central repository, with other social media channels added to it over time. The basic premise of this is to allow people from all over the world to share their views on Biometrics. And yes, it will be subscription based (hey, I have to make money also!!!).
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