Professional Networking sites for Business Development

. Introduction
The dynamism of the market has been a major area of everyones concern. The alarming shift from just selling the products to being into the customers has given marketing a different phase from push marketing to more of communicating with customers. E arlier the companies were connecting with the customers through radio, television, print media, bill boards and other traditional advertising. Now with a realization that the main conviction source are our colleagues , friends and our social network, where we lend our ears and mind with a personal touch and usually get persuaded taking it as more true and honest. At the same time, technology paved the way for new possibilities. TiVo & digital video recorders made it easy for us to bypass & ignore commercials in live T.V. MPG players helped us listen to music & podcast on demand, which similarly margin zed radio advertising, online retailer realized that they could increase dates by allowing visitors to their site to offer personal recommendation about products they were selling and of course, the social media industry was very successful. It the rise of mainstream social media has proceeds one thing. It may be for providing oneself

with significant identification socially. But social media today captures a lot of unusual information about users. Sometimes that mundane information can include on experience, point view or negative, with your brand or with your Company. Today everyone can connect to their own little social circle of usually a few hundred people. People don't just hear about news, events, and so on from the local TV news broadcast and/or newspapers. People here about things from blogs, Twitter, articles, casual conservation. The term social media refers to the collection of technologies that capture communication, content, and so on across individuals, their friends, and their social naturals. These online social networking sites are commonly used for interacting with the people all over

the world ,which are also known as Professional Networking sites. These social networking websites function like an online community of Internet users. Many of these online community members share common interests in hobbies, religion or politics. Once an individual grants access to a social networking website he begins to socialize. The socialization may include reading the professional pages of other members and possibly even contacting them. The professional networking sites are primarily based on relationships and interactions of a business nature. This is a very beneficial tool for the business professionals. These professional

networking sites allows the business professionals to collaborate and network by their business interests or industry and thus this enables them to share knowledge and stay informed. If you are seeking To expand the business interests then professional networking sites should be checked out as it allows you to connect and network with the other business professionals. Professional networking / It is basically a branch of social science that applies to a wide range of human organizations, big or small. The study of professional/social networking provides an understanding of the mappings connecting one individual to others; helps to evaluate the social capital of that individual and can help in identifying primary groups. Professional networking is the grouping of individuals into specific groups, like small rural communities or neighborhood subdivision. Although social networking is a most popular online site which links the people from every sector especially in the workplace, universities, and high school .Today the internet is filled with millions of individuals who are looking to meet other people, to gather and share first hand information and experiences about cooking, golfing, gardening, developing friendships or professional alliances, finding employment, business-to-business marketing and even groups sharing information about the end of the Mayan calendar and the great shift to assure December 21, 2012. A professional network service is a type of social network service that is focused solely on interactions and relationships of a business interaction. It is a way to either find work or get ahead in your career as well as gain resources and opportunities for networking. It is really a call to action for professionals to re-address their use of social networks and begin to reap as many rewards from networking professionally as they do personally. Business mostly depend on resources and information outside company and in order to get what they need, they need to reach out and professionally network to others, such as employees or clients as well as potential opportunities. Nardi, Whittaker and Schwarz(2002) point three main tasks that they believe networkers need to attend in order to keep a successful professional (International) network i.e. building a network maintaining the network and activating selected contacts. They stress on the fact that networkers need to continue to add new contacts to their network in order to access as many resources as possible and to maintain their network through staying in touch with their contacts/associates. This is so that the contacts are easy to activate/stimulate when the networker has work that needs to be done. By using a professional network service, businesses are able to keep all of their networks up-todate, in order, and help to figure out the best way to efficiently get in touch with each of them. Its hard remembering all of that on your own, so having a service that can do all that helps relieve some of the stress when trying to get things done. Not all professional network services are online sites that helps to promote a business. There are services that connect/link you to other services that helps to promote the business other than online

sites, such as phone/internet companies that provide services and companies that specifically are designed to do all of the promoting, online and in person, for a business. Professional networking involves the use of the internet to connect users with their friends, family and acquaintances. These(Professional networking) websites are not necessarily about meeting new people online ,instead they are primarily about connecting with friends, family and associates you already have in real life. The most well known examples of social media include social networking sites like
Facebook and Twitter, Blogging technologies like type pad and word press, crowed sourcing products like Wikipedia, Photo & video sharing sites like Flicker & You tube, & others. These technologies help users easily create content on the Internet and share it with others. Social media is the Infrastructures that helps user to become publishers of content that is interesting to them & their friends. These sites allow you to share photos, videos

and information, organize events, chat ,download music and even play games like scrabble and chess online.
The study is organized into six sections. Section - I deals with the concept, features, definition, types and classification of social network. Section - II has been devoted to a discussion of evolution and growth of social networking sites & facebook. Section - III discusses the development of facebook & its statistical information (data). Section - IV discusses Role of Social Networking sites in Business, Section - V discusses the Statistical Analysis of Social Networking Sites and the last Section - VI specifies summary and concluding remarks.

Section-I: Concepts 1. Social Network/Networking Social networks are groups of people, or communities, who share a common interest, perspective, or background. The social graph is the broad collection of people, places & Interests that makes us individual. Nostaligia, one of the driving force and feeling which had given social networking sites a bigger bite of everydays meal. It keeps us connected with our friends and the memories. Many experts believe that Facebook may emerge into a "next generation social operating system". Similar to windows and the cube hogging into facebook & other social networks is the first thing a lot of people do every day, and it will only get more important as it attracts more users. Social networking is the grouping of individuals into specific groups, like small rural communities and neighborhood subdivision. Although social networking is possible in person, especially in the workplace, universities, colleges and high schools and it is most popular online. This is because unlike most high schools, colleges, or workplaces, the internet is filled with millions of individuals who are looking to meet other people, to gather and share first-hand information and experiences about cooking, golfing, gardening, developing friendships professional alliances, finding employment, business-to-business marketing and even groups sharing information about baking cookies to the Thrive Movement. The topics and interests are as varied and rich as the story of our universe. When it comes to online social networking, websites are commonly used. These websites are known as social sites. Social networking websites function like an online community of internet users. Depending on the website in question, many of these online community members share common interests in hobbies, religion,

political, social and alternative lifestyles. Once you are granted access to a social networking website you can begin to socialize. This socialization may include reading the profile pages of other members and possibly even contacting them. Another one of those benefits includes diversity because the internet gives individuals from all around the world access to social networking sites. This means that although you are in the United States, you could develop an online friendship with someone in Denmark or India. Not only will you make new friends, but you just might learn a thing or two about new cultures or new languages and learning is always a good thing. As mentioned, social networking often involves grouping specific individuals or organizations together. While there are a number of social networking websites that focus on particular interests, there are others that do not. The websites without a main focus are often referred to as "traditional" social networking websites and usually have open memberships. This means that anyone can become a member, no matter what their hobbies, beliefs, or views are. However, once you are inside this online community, you can begin to create your own network of friends and eliminate members that do not share common interests or goals.

1.1 Types of Social Networks There are three types of social media sites: the one size fits all the one-tricky pony and the hybrid. 1.1.1 One Size Fits All The one-size-fits-all social network provides the user with one-stop shopping for all of their online community, entertainment, communication, and social media needs. 1.1.2 The One-tricky Pony These types of social media sites try to do one thing only & to do it well. They may focus on helping you communicate to other people in a narrowly defined way. They might be widgets, or small applications, that live on other websites. They perform a single task, such as telling you what movies are playing with a certain zip code. 1.1.3 Hybrids Hybrids social media websites tend to focus on one primary price of functionality but also wrap other social networking features into the platform. In many cases, the site started off as a one-tri day pony & evolved into a hybrid due to market preserves, well requests, or other forces. 1.2 Seven Truths of Social Networks

A social network is only a few years old, we already know a lot about how consumers use them. Besides a few years is a generation in Internet Parlance anyway. There are seven truths of Social networks that you can rely upon. 1. Social media is preferred way of people in younger demographics to communicate with each other. 2. Social media is based on the concept of friends, but that term today is very loosely applied. Similarly, profiles are loosely defined & can be used in a variety of way by people, companies, brands & so on. 3. The more active a consumer is on the Internet, the more likely they participate in multiple social networks. Oftentimes, these people are influencers within a circle of friends have a tremendous impact on the opinions of others. 4. Once Information is shared on a social network, it is out there & can't easily be contained. Everything is out in the open & largely visible for other people to see. 5. 6. When building a strategy, you must think comprehensively. The rules are still being made. Social media "Etiquette" is still relatively immature. Tread carefully. 7. The factors that contribute to social media usage. Everyone on social networks is motivated by some combination of the following human needs. 1.3 New Role of Customers: Social Interactions The "Social" in "Social Web" implies more than technology, more then the networks where people post photos and review books: It's less about the "what" and more about "How, Why, and among whom" that distinguisher the social web from earlier, transactional online technologies. The term "Social" refers to the ways in which people connect. Friends, requiring a two way acknowledgement of a relationship are different than more casually associated followers. The term "Social" also provides insight into only they are connecting perhaps to learn something, to share on experience, or to collaborate on a project. It is the relationships and interaction between participants that connect community members and define the social graph, a term of out that means simply who you are, who you are connected to and what you are doing. The social graph is to building relationships what ordinary links between websites are to building an information network: they define the social connections. Without the social graph without the profiles and friends, followers, and similar relations that forms between them online social communities are reduced to task-oriented, self-serve utilities much as a basic website or shopping catalog might present itself. 1.4 SOCIAL ECOSYSTEM Three fundamental opportunities for understanding and leveraging the behaviours associated with collaborative interaction. These opportunities the social graph social applications, and social platforms. 1.4.1 The Social Graph The social graph is the collection of lines, relationships, interaction and other connections that comprise a social network. Relationships and interactions are typically building around a set of primary participants

activities. This section course three of the primary actions: finding and following, reputation managements and moderation along with the development of conduct and use policies that are essential to maintaining a healthy, collaborative environment each of these plays a fundamental role in developing purpose driven communities-think support sites, supplies networks, and employee knowledge sharing and therefore, in Implementing a successful social business strategy. 1.4.2 Social Applications "Social application: Software that co-ordinates group interaction that is important to running your business or organization extension to the core capabilities of the social platforms & software services that support social networks-provide the additional, specific functionality of facebook are examples of social applications. Social applications enable the extension of relationship between a brand, product, service to the individual level by providing very specific, member selected functionality, social applications are also important is that they facilitate the overall growth of the network. 1.4.3 Social Platforms Social communications and other social platforms-build around passions, life-styles, and causes or similar higher callings-provide the gathering parts for individuals interested in socializing & collaboration in pursuit of the specific activities they enjoy together. By building a community around a passion lifestyle, or cause & then fostering and strengthening the relationships between the brand, product, or service and customers and Influences, the progression to collaborative participation and higher-level engagement is enabled. Importantly, these three-the social graph, social application, and social platform (community) drive each other. 1.5 Social Network/Networking Sites

Burke (2006) defines social networking sites as . . . a loose any affiliation of people who interact through websites. The web enables person to build a last number of relationship with others regarding of geographical distances.
So in simple words social network sites are web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site. When we use the term "social network site" to describe this phenomenon, the term "social networking sites" also appears in public discourse, and the two terms are often used interchangeably. We chose not to employ the term "networking" for two reasons: emphasis and scope. "Networking" emphasizes relationship initiation, often between strangers. While network is possible on these sites, it is not the primary practice on many of them, nor is it what differentiates them from other forms of computermediated communication. But there is a matter of long discussion. What makes social network sites unique is not that they allow individuals to meet strangers, but rather that they enable users to articulate and make visible their social networks. This can result in connections between individuals that would not otherwise be made, but that is often not the goal, and these meetings are frequently between "latent ties" who share some offline connection. On

many of the large SNSs, participants are not necessarily "networking" or looking to meet new people; instead, they are primarily communicating with people who are already a part of their extended social network. To emphasize this articulated social network as a critical organizing feature of these sites, we label them "social network sites."

Additionally, social networking sites are expanding themselves in new areas. For example, Facebook is pursuing a strategy to become an operating system for the internet (Shafor, 2008). By using application programming interface, facebook allows user to create and deploy different custom-made applications and features, which can be business related ads, promotions, or coupons or non-business applications such as games, quizzes, meetings, groups, fans clubs, etc. Social networking sites (SNS) have emerged as a new bread of web 2.0 websites. The sites are focused on uses created content (UCC), having been designed so user profiles are integrated into the community development. These social sites are catered to a friend-of- a friend (FOAF) angles and individuals and groups are connected directly with others who share common interests, as user upload and share photos, videos and ideas (in exchange for joining as with sites such as flicker and you tube. As SNS becomes more popular, with increased exposure to personal data, the information becomes a goldmine for marketing and advertising companies and political interest groups, users are more likely to find value service with a social component. Several recent studies has shown that Korea is currently leading the world in every segment of the telecommunication market, broadband and internet growth, mobile and cellular applications, and short message services, while third generation (36) wireless was introduced in Korea offering greater band with in the earlier period of the 20th century, the U.S. did not see true nation wide 3G coverage until 2007. This shows that the status of web 2.0 and social networking difference between U.S. and Korea. In the late 1990s, there has been walanche of web 2.0 sites. Many of those web 2.0 sites allow members to register to become friends in which the status is displayed through forged connections, which enables instant access to each others communication channels and other resources. For instance, a registered member of Myspace or Facebook, two of the most popular social networks in the U.S., allow users to interact and socialize within their friends network through instant messaging, e-mail, blogging, photographs, indoor, podcosts and numerous other resources. Currently, the disadvantages lies in users being unable to manage multiple social network accounts from a single site. The users must log into each social networking site to interact with and discuss topics with the particular community.

Social networking sites such as facebook, myspace, Linkedin and Bebo have permeated society and workplace over recent years. Facebook now has an incredible 1.11 billion users worldwide. With media giants such as TV, News Corporation and Google buying up social networking sites and other sites arriving on the scene constantly - there is a little doubt that they are here to stay. Some sites are

focused on letting friends stay in touch (Myspace, Facebook) while others, such as linkedin and plaxo serve to network the business community. Organizations are right to embrace these sites as an extra weapon in their sales and marketing armary. However, they need to so secure in the knowledge that organizational and employee security is not being compromised. Unfortunately, the extremely rapid growth in popularity of these sites risks catching many IT departments unprepared. Social and business networking sites are changing the way of the people who communicate with each other, both for business and pleasures. Some might think it makes sense for organizations to simply block employees access to these sites while at work, citing cyber-slacking as the reason, but it isnt that straight forward. These sites provide employees and the organizations they work for with a very real business advantage, some of the benefits of allowing employees to access social and business networking sites. One of the most important current changes with regard to the use of the internet is the transformation of passive information users into active actors, which increasingly create the content of the world wide web (www) themselves. Along with these changes, the economic impact of established media declines and experts predict heavy socio-economic and political implications (Bernott et al., 2008). A main driver for this development is the active use of online social networks, where people are connecting and communicating more and more online with one another (Kazienko et al., 2006; Gross et al., 2005). Networking sites such as facebook.com or Xing.com not only provide a technical platform to establish and maintain relationships between users, but also enable users to present themselves to a wide public and to make visible their own social networks (Boyel et al., 2007). This emergent technical and social phenomenon generates an increasingly important economic impact and has spurred enormous attention among researchers and practitioners. Thus, media and IT companies have been acquiring recently online social networks for considerable amounts to adopt their business models to the new environmental conditions and to reorganize their companies for the future. In general, a social network can be defined as a social structure made of nodes, which are usually individuals or organizations tied by one or more specific types of relations. Financial exchange, friendship, passion, trade, web links, airline routes, hobbies etc. are social networks that connect people with all different types of interests, and one area that is expanding in the use social networking . Business are beginning to use social networks as a mean to help employees to connect, or customers to obtain information or help. Business companies using social networking services to support their products or customers services may be becoming a new trend. A good indication of this trend is CISCOs latest acquisitions of tribe.net, an almost forgotten social networking site, and five across, a developer of social networking software.

In their early days, social networks were also used as a means of building links to business websites - an important search engine optimization technique. However, in most cases, todays social networking sites have made adjustments that make these links worthless for search ranking improvements. Still, such link can bring increased traffic to a website. While traditionally, social networks were made up of people who might gather face-to-face, todays social networks are predominantly online. Examples of todays social networks include social networking sites, such as linkedin, Facebook, Myspace and others. With increasing mobile phone popularity and enhanced cell phone technology even twitter might be considered a social network of sorts where you can let your network of friends know what you are doing or thinking at any given moment.

1.6 Features of Social Networking Sites When SNSs have implemented a wide variety of technical features, their backbone consists of visible profiles that display an articulated list of Friends. Who are also users of the system. Profiles are unique pages where one can "type oneself into being. The profile includes descriptors such as age, location, interests, and an "about me" section. Most sites also encourage users to upload a profile photo. Some sites allow users to enhance their profiles by adding multimedia content or modifying their profile's look and feel. After joining a social network site, users are prompted to identify others in the system with whom they have a relationship. The public display of connections is a crucial component of SNSs. The Friends list contains links to each Friend's profile, enabling viewers to traverse the network graph by clicking through the Friends lists. Most SNSs also provide a mechanism for users to leave messages on their Friends' profiles Beyond profiles, Friends, comments, and private messaging, SNSs vary greatly in their features and user base. Some have photo-sharing or video-sharing capabilities; others have built-in blogging and instant messaging technology. While SNSs are often designed to be widely accessible, many attract homogeneous populations initially. 1.7 Purposes of Social Networking Sites Social networking sites play a big role among people to connect family and friends for various purposes which are : General, Music, Research, Games, Hospitality, Talent search, Language-learning, Blogging, Hobbies, Locating Friends, Student and Education, Social polling, photo/ video sharing, sports, movies and series (TV), travel, book lovers and books, dating medical support, teaching and learning, mobile community. Apart from these we have a long list of purposes of social networking sites. These purposes cannot be bind in list because of these are connected with social needs and feelings which have no boundaries. 1.8 Advantages of Social Networking Sites We all need a network to keep in touch with people and to get know more people well, but where is the time for us to go personally and visit every one. Now it is all possible, just through these social networking sites. On line networking websites provides an easy platform that lets you stay connected with the right people or group to explore your choice of opportunities. Networking sites are great and affer huge benefits to individuals, professionals and students, they are following:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Facilitates open communication, leading to enhanced information discovery and delivery. Allows employees to discuss ideas, post views, ask questions and share links. Provides an opportunity to widen business contacts. Targets a wide audience, making it a useful and effective recruitment tool. Improves business reputation and client base with minimal use of advertising. Expands market research, implements marketing campaigns, delivers communications and directs interested people to specific websites.

7.

Social networking sites allow people to create new relationship and reconnect with friends and family.

8. 9.

Social networking sites allow for creative expression in a new medium. Free messaging, blogging, photo storage, games, event invitation and many other services to any one are possible on online.

10. 11. 12.

Social networking sites bring people with common interest together. Social media helps low income kids become more familiar with computer and related technology. It is cheaper to use online social networking for both personal and business use because most of it is usually free.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

Definitely you can save the customers confidence. Guaranteed meeting places. Keep in touch with family as well as professional networking. Staying informed about the world. Some social networking sites offer advertising to its subscribers. Social networking sites offer campus surveys. Practicing social skills and learning to use technology. Developing independence and expressing personality.

1.9 Disadvantages of Social Networking Sites Privacy and security issues are two problems that are often associated with being a member of a social network. Privacy is a huge issue since most social networking sites require that the user provide personal information. This information is on the internet and easy to access by everyone .Another issues associated with social networking is cyber bullying. Another disadvantage of social networking is that although if it is easily accessible this may be an issue especially for young teenagers and online predators that may abuse and misuse these sites. Some other disadvantages of social networking are following: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Social networking is time intensive. Lack of feedback control. Social networking sites can sell your personal information. Opens up the possibility for backers to commit fraud and launch spam and virus attacks. Increases the risk of people falling prey to online scams that seem genuine, resulting in data or identify theft.

6. 7.

Potentially results in lost productivity, especially if employees are busy updating profile etc. Many result in negative comments from employees about the company or potential legal consequences if employees use these sites.

8. 9.

To view objectionable, illicit or offensive material. Second marketing seen as intrusive.

10. Mainly attracts current grand users. 11. Lack of anonymity. 12. Compromising with in appropriate pictures, statements or other information. 13. The sites offer many time wasting activities that supplied more productive activities. 14. Teens growing up with these sites may not be aware that the information they post is public and that photos and text can be retrieved even after deletion. 15. The use of social networking sites can cause personality and brain disorders in children. 16. Cyber criminals can gather information from social networking sites. 17. Social networking sites were created to make many, not to improve people lives. 18. Sites accumulate dates about people for the purpose of selling advertising. 19. Face-to-face sacrificing has declined. 20. User of their sites frequently is proving to social isolation.

The Emergence of Social Networks Social network sites(SNSs) are increasingly attracting the attention of academic and Industry researchers intrigued by their affordances and reach. Since their introduction, social network sites (SNSs) such as MySpace, Facebook, Cyberworld, and Bebo have attracted millions of users, many of whom have integrated these sites into their daily practices. As of this writing, there are hundreds of SNSs, with various technological affordances, supporting a wide range of interests and practices. While their key technological features are fairly consistent, the cultures that emerge around SNSs are varied. Most sites support the maintenance of pre-existing social networks, but others help strangers connect based on shared interests, political views, or activities. Some sites cater to diverse audiences, while others attract people based on common language orshared racial,sexual, religious, or nationality-based identities. Sites also vary in the extent to which they incorporate new information and communication tools, such as mobile connectivity, blogging, and photo/video-sharing. Scholars from disparate fields have examined SNSs in order to understand the practices, implications, culture, and meaning of the sites, as well as users' engagement with them .

The purpose of this introduction is to provide a conceptual, historical, and scholarly perspective. Social Network Sites: A Definition We define social network sites as web-based services that allow individuals to

(1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and

(3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. A History of Social Network Sites The Early Years According to the definition above, the first recognizable social network site launched in 1997 known as Six Degrees.com allowed users to create profiles, list their Friends and, beginning in 1998, surf the Friends lists. Each of these features existed in some form before Six Degrees, of course. Profiles existed on most major dating sites and many community sites. AIM and ICQ buddy lists supported lists of Friends, although those Friends were not visible to others. Classmates.com allowed people to affiliate with their high school or college and surf the network for others who were also affiliated, but users could not create profiles or list Friends until years later. Six Degrees was the first to combine these features. Six Degrees promoted itself as a tool to help people connect with and send messages to others. While Six Degrees attracted millions of users, it failed to become a sustainable business and, in 2000, the service closed. Looking back, its founder believes that Six Degrees was simply ahead of its time (A. Weinreich, personal communication,July 11,2007). While people were already flocking to the Internet, most did not have extended networks of friends who were online. Early adopters complained that there was little to do after accepting Friend requests, and most users were not interested in meeting strangers. From 1997 to 2001, a number of community tools began supporting various combinations of profiles and publicly articulated Friends. Asian Avenue, Black Planet, and Mi Gente allowed users to create personal, professional, and dating profilesusers could identify Friends on their personal profiles without seeking approval for those connections (O.Wasow, personal communication, August 16, 2007). Likewise, shortly after its launch in 1999, Live Journal listed one-directional connections on user pages. Live Journal's creator suspects that he fashioned these Friends after instant messaging buddy lists (B. Fitzpatrick, personal communication, June 15, 2007)on Live Journal, people mark others as Friends to follow their journals and manage privacy settings. The Korean virtual worlds site Cyber world was started in 1999 and added SNS features in 2001, independent of these other sites(see Kim & Yun, thisissue). Likewise, when the Swedish web community Lunar Storm refashioned itself as an SNS in 2000, it contained Friendslists, guest books, and diary pages(D. Skog, personal communication, September 24, 2007). The next wave of SNSs began when Ryze.com was launched in 2001 to help people leverage their business networks. Ryze's founder reports that he first introduced the site to his friendsprimarily members of the San Francisco business and technology community, including the entrepreneurs and investors behind many future SNSs (A. Scott, personal communication, June 14, 2007). In particular, the people behind Ryze, Tribe.net, LinkedIn, and Friendster were tightly entwined personally and professionally. They believed that they could support each other without competing (Festa, 2003). In the end, Ryze never acquired mass popularity, Tribe.net grew to attract a passionate niche user base, LinkedIn became a powerful business service, and Friendster became the most significant, if only as "one

of the biggest disappointments in Internet history" (Chafkin, 2007, p. 1).Figure 1. Timeline of the launch dates of many major SNSs and dates when community sites re-launched with SNS features Like any brief history of a major phenomenon, ours is necessarily incomplete. In the following section we discuss Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook, three key SNSs that shaped the business, cultural, and research landscape . The Rise (and Fall) of Friendster Friendster launched in 2002 as a social complement to Ryze. It was designed to compete with Match.com, a profitable online dating site (Cohen, 2003). While most dating sites focused on introducing people to strangers with similar interests, Friendster was designed to help friends-of-friends meet, based on the assumption that friends-of-friends would make better romantic partners than would strangers(J. Abrams, personal communication, March 27, 2003). Friendster gained traction among three groups of early adopters who shaped the sitebloggers, attendees of the Burning Man arts festival, and gay men (boyd, 2004)and grew to 300,000 users through word of mouth before traditional press coverage began in May 2003 (O'Shea, 2003). As Friendster's popularity surged, the site encountered technical and social difficulties (boyd, 2006b). Friendster's servers and databases were ill-equipped to handle its rapid growth, and the site faltered regularly, frustrating users who replaced email with Friendster. Because organic growth had been critical to creating a coherent community, the onslaught of new users who learned about the site from media coverage upset the cultural balance. Furthermore, exponential growth meant a collapse in social contexts: Users had to face their bosses and former classmates alongside their close friends. To complicate matters, Friendster began restricting the activities of its most passionate users. The initial design of Friendster restricted users from viewing profiles of people who were more than four degrees away (friends-of-friends). In order to view additional profiles, users began adding acquaintances and interesting-looking strangers to expand their reach. Some began massively collecting Friends, an activity that was implicitly encouraged through a "most popular" feature. The ultimate collectors were fake profiles representing iconic fictional characters: celebrities, concepts, and other such entities. These "Fakesters" outraged the company, who banished fake profiles and eliminated the "most popular" feature (boyd, in press-b). While few people actually created Fakesters, many more enjoyed surfing Fakesters for entertainment or using functional Fakesters (e.g., "Brown University") to find people they knew. The active deletion of Fakesters (and genuine users who chose non-realistic photos) signaled to some that the company did not share users' interests. Many early adopters left because of the combination of technical difficulties ,social collisions, and a rupture of trust between users and the site (boyd, 2006b). However, at the same time that it was fading in the U.S., its popularity skyrocketed in the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia (Goldberg, 2007). SNSs Hit the Mainstream

From 2003 onward, many new SNSs were launched, prompting social software analyst Clay Shirky (2003) to coin the term YASNS: "Yet Another Social Networking Service." Most took the form of profile-centric sites, trying to replicate the early success of Friendster or target specific demographics. While socially-organized SNSs solicit broad audiences, professional sites such as LinkedIn, Visible Path, and Xing (formerly openBC) focus on business people. "Passion-centric" SNSs like Dogster (T. Rheingold, personal communication, August 2, 2007) help strangers connect based on shared interests. Care2 helps activists meet, Couch surfing connects travelers to people with couches, and My Church joins Christian churches and their members. Furthermore, as the social media and user-generated content phenomena grew, websites focused on media sharing began implementing SNS features and becoming SNSs themselves. Examples include Flickr (photo sharing), Last.FM (music listening habits), and YouTube (video sharing). With the plethora of venture-backed start ups launching in Silicon Valley, few people paid attention to SNSs that gained popularity elsewhere, even those built by major corporations. For example, Google's Orkut failed to build a sustainable U.S. user base, but a "Brazilian invasion" (Fragoso, 2006) made Orkut the national SNS of Brazil. Microsoft's Windows Live Spaces(a.k.a. MSN Spaces) also launched to lukewarm U.S. reception but became extremely popular elsewhere. Few analysts or journalists noticed when MySpace launched in Santa Monica, California, hundreds of miles from Silicon Valley. MySpace was begun in 2003 to compete with sites like Friendster, Xanga, and Asian Avenue, according to co-founder Tom Anderson(personal communication, August 2, 2007); the founders wanted to attract estranged Friendster users(T. Anderson, personal communication, February 2, 2006). After rumors emerged that Friendster would adopt a fee-based system, users posted Friendster messages encouraging people to join alternate SNSs, including Tribe.net and MySpace (T. Anderson, personal communication, August 2, 2007).Because of this, MySpace was able to grow rapidly by capitalizing on Friendster's alienation of its early adopters. One particularly notable group that encouraged others to switch were indie-rock bands who were expelled from Friendster for failing to comply with profile regulations. While MySpace was not launched with bands in mind, they were welcomed. Indie-rock bands from the Los Angeles region began creating profiles, and local promoters used MySpace to advertise VIP passes for popular clubs. Intrigued, MySpace contacted local musicians to see how they could support them (T. Anderson, personal communication, September 28, 2006). Bands were not the sole source of MySpace growth, but the symbiotic relationship between bands and fans helped MySpace expand beyond former Friendster users. The bands-and-fans dynamic was mutually beneficial :Bands wanted to be able to contact fans, while fans desired attention from their favorite bands and used. Friend connections signal identity and affiliation. Futhermore, MySpace differentiated itself by regularly adding features based on user demand (boyd, 2006b) and by allowing users to personalize their pages. This "feature" emerged because MySpace did not restrict users from adding HTML into the forms that framed their profiles; a copy/paste code culture emerged on the web to support users in generating unique MySpace backgrounds and layouts(Perkel, in press). Teenagers began joining MySpace en masse in 2004. Unlike older users, most teens were never on Friendstersome joined because they wanted to connect with their favorite bands; others were introduced to the site through older family members. As teens began signing up, they encouraged their friends to join. Rather than rejecting underage users,

MySpace changed its user policy to allow minors. As the site grew, three distinct populations began to form: musicians/artists, teenagers, and the post-college urban social crowd. By and large, the latter two groups did not interact with one another except through bands. Because of the lack of mainstream press coverage during 2004, few others noticed the site's growing popularity. Then, in July 2005, News Corporation purchased MySpace for $580 million (BBC, 2005 ), attracting massive media attention. Afterwards, safety issues plagued MySpace. The site was implicated in a series of sexual interactions between adults and minors, prompting legal action (Consumer Affairs, 2006). A moral panic concerning sexual predators quickly spread (Bahney, 2006), although research suggests that the concerns were exaggerated. A Global Phenomenon While MySpace attracted the majority of media attention in the U.S. and abroad, SNSs were proliferating and growing in popularity worldwide. Friendster gained traction in the Pacific Islands, Orkut became the premier SNS in Brazil before growing rapidly in India (Madhavan, 2007), Mixi attained widespread adoption in Japan, Lunar Storm took off in Sweden, Dutch users embraced Hyves, Grono captured Poland, Hi5 was adopted in smaller countries in Latin America, South America, and Europe, and Bebo became very popular in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia. Additionally, previously popular communication and community services began implementing SNS features. The Chinese QQ instant messaging service instantly became the largest SNS worldwide when it added profiles and made friends visible (McLeod, 2006), while the forum tool Cyberworld cornered the Korean market by introducing homepages and buddies (Ewers, 2006). Blogging services with complete SNS features also became popular. In the U.S., blogging tools with SNS features, such as Xanga, Live Journal, and Vox, attracted broad audiences. Sky rock reigns in France, and Windows Live Spaces dominates numerous markets worldwide, including in Mexico, Italy, and Spain. Although SNSs like QQ, Orkut, and Live Spaces are just as large as, if not larger than, MySpace, they receive little coverage in U.S. and English-speaking media, making it difficult to track their trajectories. Expanding Niche Communities Alongside these open services, other SNSs launched to support niche demographics before expanding to a broader audience. Unlike previous SNSs, Facebook was designed to support distinct college networks only. Facebook began in early 2004 as a Harvard-only SNS (Cassidy, 2006). To join, a user had to have a harvard.edu email address. As Facebook began supporting other schools, those users were also required to have university email addresses associated with those institutions, a requirement that kept the site relatively closed and contributed to users' perceptions of the site as an intimate, private community. Beginning in September 2005, Facebook expanded to include high school students, professionals inside corporate networks, and, eventually, everyone. The change to open signup did not mean that new users could easily access users in closed networksgaining access to corporate networks still required the appropriate .com address, while gaining access to high school networks required administrator approval. (As of this writing, only membership in regional networks requires no permission.) Unlike other SNSs, Facebook users are unable to make their full

profiles public to all users. Another feature that differentiates Facebook is the ability for outside developers to build "Applications" which allow users to personalize their profiles and perform other tasks, such as compare movie preferences and chart travel histories. While most SNSs focus on growing broadly and exponentially, others explicitly seek narrower audiences. Some, like a Small World and Beautiful People, intentionally restrict access to appear selective and elite. Othersactivity-centered sites like Couch surfing, identity-driven sites like Black Planet, and affiliation-focused sites like MyChurchare limited by their target demographic and thust end to be smaller. Finally, anyone who wishes to create a niche social network site can do so on Ning, a platform and hosting service that encourages users to create their own SNSs. Currently, there are no reliable data regarding how many people use SNSs, although marketing research indicates that SNSs are growing in popularity worldwide (comScore, 2007). This growth has prompted many corporations to invest time and money in creating, purchasing, promoting, and advertising SNSs. At the same time, other companies are blocking their employees from accessing the sites. Additionally, the U.S. military banned soldiers from accessing MySpace (Frosch, 2007) and the Canadian government prohibited employees from Facebook (Benzie, 2007), while the U.S. Congress has proposed legislation to ban youth from accessing SNSs in schools and libraries(H.R. 5319, 2006; S. 49, 2007). The rise of SNSs indicates a shift in the organization of online communities. While websites dedicated to communities of interest still exist and prosper, SNSs are primarily organized around people, not interests. Early public online communities such as Use net and public discussion forums were structured by topics or according to topical hierarchies, but social network sites are structured as personal (or "egocentric") networks, with the individual at the center of their own community. This more accurately mirrors unmediated social structures, where "the world is composed of networks, not groups" (Wellman, 1988, p. 37). The introduction of SNS features has introduced a new organizational framework for online communities, and with it, a vibrant new research context. Previous Scholarship Scholarship concerning SNSs is emerging from diverse disciplinary and methodological traditions, addresses a range oftopics, and builds on a large body of CMC research. The goal of this section is to survey research that is directly concerned with social network sites, and in so doing, to set the stage for the articles in this special issue. To date, the bulk of SNS research has focused on impression management and friendship performance, networks and network structure, online/offline connections, and privacy issues. Impression Management and Friendship Performance Like other online contexts in which individuals are consciously able to construct an online representation of selfsuch as online dating profiles and MUDSSNSs constitute an important research context for

scholars investigating processes of impression management, self-presentation, and friendship performance. In one of the earliest academic articles on SNSs, boyd (2004) examined Friendster as a locus of publicly articulated social networks that allowed usersto negotiate presentations of self and connect with others. Donath and boyd (2004) extended this to suggest that "public displays of connection" serve as important identity signals that help people navigate the networked social world, in that an extended network may serve to validate identity information presented in profiles. While most sites encourage users to construct accurate representations of themselves, participants do thisto varying degrees. Marwick (2005) found that users on three different SNSs had complex strategies for negotiating the rigidity of a prescribed "authentic" profile, while boyd (in press-b) examined the phenomenon of "Fakesters" and the waysin which profiles could never be "real." The extent to which portraits are authentic or playful varies across sites; both social and technological forcesshape user practices. Skog (2005)found that the statusfeature on LunarStorm strongly influenced how people behaved and what they choose to revealprofilesthere indicate one'sstatus as measured by activity (e.g., sending messages) and indicators of authenticity (e.g., using a "real" photo instead of a drawing). Another aspect ofself-presentation isthe articulation offriendship links, which serve as identity markersforthe profile owner. Impression management is one ofthe reasons given by Friendster usersfor choosing particularfriends(Donath & boyd, 2004).Recognizing this, Zinman and Donath (2007) noted that MySpace spammersleverage people's willingnessto connect to interesting people to find targetsfortheirspam. In their examination of LiveJournal "friendship," Fono and Raynes-Goldie (2006) described users' understandingsregarding public displays of connections and how the Friending function can operate as a catalyst forsocial drama. In listing user motivationsfor Friending, boyd (2006a) points out that "Friends" on SNSs are not the same as "friends" in the everyday sense; instead, Friends provide context by offering users an imagined audience to guide behavioral norms. Other work in this area has examined the use of

Friendster Testimonials as self-presentational devices(boyd & Heer, 2006) and the extent to which the attractiveness of one's Friends(as indicated by Facebook's "Wall" feature) impacts impression formation (Walther, Van Der Heide, Kim, & Westerman, in press). Networks and Network Structure Social network sites also provide rich sources of naturalistic behavioral data. Profile and linkage data from SNSs can be gathered either through the use of automated collection techniques or through datasets provided directly from the company, enabling network analysis researchers to explore largescale patterns of friend in, usage, and other visible indicators(Hogan, in press), and continuing an analysis trend that started with examinations of blogs and other websites. For instance, Golder, Wilkinson, and Huberman(2007) examined an anonymized dataset consisting of 362 million messages exchanged by over four million Facebook usersfor insight into Friending and messaging activities. Lampe, Ellison, and Steinfield (2007) explored the relationship between profile elements and number of Facebook friends, finding that profile fields that reduce transaction costs and are harder to falsify are most likely to be associated with larger number of friendship links. These kinds of data also lend themselves well to analysis through network visualization (Adamic, Buyukkokten, & Adar, 2003; Heer & boyd, 2005; Paolillo & Wright, 2005). SNS researchers have also studied the network structure of Friendship. Analyzing the roles people played in the growth of Flickr and Yahoo! 360's networks, Kumar, Novak, and Tomkins(2006) argued that there are passive members, inviters, and linkers "who fully participate in the social evolution of the network" (p. 1). Scholarship concerning Live Journal's network has included a Friendship classification scheme (Hsu, Lancaster,Paradesi, & Weniger, 2007), an analysis of the role of language in the topology of friendship (Herring et al., 2007), research into the importance of geography in Friending (Liben-Nowell, Novak, Kumar,Raghavan, and Tomkins, 2005), and studies on what motivates people to join particular communities(Backstrom, Huttenlocher, Kleinberg, & Lan, 2006).Based on Orkut data, Spertus, Sahami, and Buyukkokten (2005) identified a topology of usersthrough their membership in certain communities; they suggest thatsites can use thisto recommend additional communities of interest to users. Finally, Liu, Maes, and Davenport (2006) argued that Friend connections are not the only network structure worth investigating. They examined the waysin which the performance oftastes(favorite music, books, film, etc.) constitutes an alternate network structure, which they call a "taste fabric."

The History of Twitter

Twitter began as an idea that Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey had in 2006. Dorsey had originally imagined Twitter as an SMSbased communications platform. Groups of friends could keep tabs on what each other were doing based on their status updates. Like texting, but not. During a brainstorming session at the podcasting company Odeo. Jack Dorsey proposed this SMS based platform to Odeo's co-founder Evan Williams . Evan,

and his co-founder Biz Stone by extension, gave Jack the go-ahead to spend more time on the project and develop it further. In its early days, Twitter was referred to as "twttr". At the time, a popular trend, sometimes to gain domain name advantage, was to drop vowels in the name of their companies and services. Software developer Noah Glass is credited with coming up with the original name twttr as well as its final incarnation as Twitter. To recap, some of the key early players in in Twitter's history are: Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams. On March 21, 2006, @Jack sent the first tweet: just setting up my twttr. It would be the beginning of a revolution. Now people from all over the world and many different fields and professions are saying it all in 140 characters or less. Dom Sagolla , in tweet 38, typed these prescient words: Oh, this is going to be addictive. Twitter Beginnings So how did Twitter get its name? Supposedly, the name was inspired by the photo-sharing site, Flickr, and other considerations were FriendStalker and Dodgeball. The definition of twitter is a short burst of inconsequential information and a series of chirps from birds. The name was fitting and so the new platform became Twitter. Soon the chirps of many twitterers would be heard/seen throughout the Twitterverse as the microblogging platform caught on with Internet users. It would still be a couple of years before it was fully mainstream but it didnt take this new site long to gain fame.The limit was set because 160 characters was the SMS carrier limit and they wanted to leave room for the username. Twitter Spreads the News Twitter is much more than just your friends telling you about their day. It has changed the media, politics and business. Many will report they hear their news first on Twitter- stories of natural disasters, sports scores, the death of a celebrity and more are shared first on Twitter. Social media and microblogging site Twitter has changed political communication profoundly. In the past, political news and commentary was only reported by a select group of those in the know. But today, we see both politicians and the Average Joe on Twitter sharing their political banter and opinions. It is a new era of citizen journalists and we see people speaking up and speaking out about the things that are important to them. Twitter has also had an impact on business as brands find a new way to reach their fans where they are already- in social media and on their smartphones. Twitter has become a tool that businesses large and small

can use to reach their target market, provide customer service, share their unique content and more. Its also become a way for everyday people to keep in touch with their favorite celebrities and a tool for the celebrities to stay in contact with their fans.

MySpace History MySpace is one of the oldest and largest social networking sites online, and it's especially popular with younger Internet users. Members can customize their sites to reflect their personalities, and they can upload videos and photos to their sites. Like the other social networks, they can look for old friends or find new friends at the site, too. MySpace boasts 125 million registered users. The company first went online in 2004, and it grew tremendously in the first few years, becoming the world's largest social networking site until Facebook overtook it in the past few years. It reached one million users in the first month of operation, and use skyrocketed from there. MySpace was created to compete with the Friendster site, and it proved remarkably popular with young people, partly because it was easy to use and began to support many other applications, like photo sharing, music, and individual designs. At first, MySpace was used internally by the eUniverse employees who created and developed the site, then they made it public, and it took off from those humble beginnings. Today, MySpace is owned by News Corporation and based in Beverly Hills, California. It employs nearly a thousand people, and it encourages applications developers to develop new widgets that work with the site. Using MySpace Effectively for Your Business MySpace is highly customizable, so you can create a business account and begin advertising your products quickly and easily. You can even add music to your site, too. It also supports photos and videos, which help market your products to a large group of users. While MySpace has fallen in popularity recently, it is still one of the most popular sites for young adult users, so if your products are geared to this age group, MySpace could be a boon for your business. Use it as a tool to build your brand and attract a whole new audience of consumers. You can blog about upcoming events and specials, react to comments, and post videos to entice people to learn more about your

business. It's a good way to reach a large amount of customers with minimal effort. Take some time to study other businesses in your area and how they market themselves on MySpace, and then take the social networking plunge yourself. MySpace is not just a social network site, but also a media hosting site that is part chat room, part movie theater, part shopping mall, part bar, and part concert that is open 24 hours, a day 7 days a week, 365 days a year (Illian 2007). In less than three years from its inception, MySpace became the most visited site on the Internet. Chris DeWolf was raised by his parents who were teachers in Portland Oregon. Rather than follow in their footsteps, DeWolf decided to go to business school at the University of Washington and then USC Marshall School of Business. DeWolf became a master of aggressive forms of online marketing, including e-mail advertising and pop-up advertising as an employee of XDrive, a startup company that provided free online storages space for photos, music, and files (Pace 2006).

HISTORY OF Classmates.Com.
In 1995, before the phrase online social network had entered our vocabulary and years before the dot.com crash spawned the term Web 2.0, a Boeing engineer named Randy Conrad developed a new kind of Web site. Conrad attended high school in the Philippines. He attended college in the United States and began working for Boeing after graduation. As the World Wide Web began to grow in the public consciousness, Conrad got an idea. Conrad wanted to track down a classmate he knew back in high school. But despite the global nature of the World Wide Web, he wasn't successful. He sat down with his son to figure out a way to make it easier to reconnect with old friends and classmates. Eventually this project developed into Classmates.com, the first big social networking site on the Web. Today, the site receives more than 16 million visitors per month . While other sites like Facebook and MySpace have membership that dwarfs Classmates.com's, the original online social network still attracts new users. Classmates.com departs from most other online social networks in a big way -- many of its features are only available to premium members. To take advantage of everything Classmates.com has to offer, users must purchase a Gold membership. The price of membership depends upon the length of the agreement. Shorter terms result in a higher cost per month. While this means that Classmates.com has a clear business model -- something other social networking sites have struggled with in the past -- it has also led to controversy. We'll take a closer look at what you can do on Classmates.com as well as why some people criticize the Web site's marketing strategy.

History of Friendster
The history of Friendster, a formerly popularsocial networking site that many cite as being one of the original social networks. Friendster was created in 2002 by Peter Chin, Jonathan Abrams and Dave Lee. The group wanted to find a way for people to meet new friends on the Internet, keep in contact with already existing friends and to expand personal networks in a safe manner. At the time of the site's creation, the concept of social networking was still novel and the group hoped web

interactions would spur face-to-face relationships among users. It wasn't until the site grew and competitors like Myspace launched that the concept of social networking globally was really approached. The group was funded in 2003 with a $12 million investment by a private capital investor firm called Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Benchmark Capital. The money was initially focused on growing the site out of a conceptual level to the large level of success the site saw. Launched in March of 2002, the site found over three million users in the first few months. Becoming a national success in the United States made the concept of social networking acceptable. The site grew to mainstream popularity and was offered a buyout in 2003 from Google. The site declined, citing a continued interest in solitary ownership. A 2006 funding offer from the group's initial investor helped to spur financial success. Later investors like DAG Ventures, IDG Ventures and a 2009 acquisition by MOL Global has helped to keep the company afloat. Another accolade of Friendster was that since the site was one of the first networks out there, they acquired numerous patents of interest to the world of social networking such as those related to gauging similar users, storage of social data relationships, content management on the Internet and more. In 2010, Facebook and several other social networks found themselves in talks with Friendster to acquire some of these patents for their services. Facebook walked away from these talks with 18 of the patents that Friendster formerly held for a negotiated sum of $39.5 million dollars.

HISTORY OF ORKUT Orkut is a social networking website that is owned and operated by Google Inc. The service is designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. The website is named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Bykkkten. Although Orkut is less popular in the United States than competitors Facebook and MySpace, it is one of the most visited websites in India and Brazil. As of April 2010, 48.0% of Orkut's users are from Brazil, followed by India with 39.2% and United States with 2.2%. Recently though, due to advent of other social networking sites, the usage of orkut has decreased. 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 Belo Horizonte. This was decided due to the large Brazilian user base and growth of legal issues. As of June 2011, Alexa traffic ranked orkut.com 96th and orkut.com.br 94th in the world; the website currently has more than 100 million active users worldwide. Anyone 18 years old or older can join Orkut. In 2003, Google offered to purchase the social network Friendster, but the offer was declined by that company. Google then internally commissioned Orkut Bykkkten to work on a competing independent project. The result was Orkut. The product launched on January 24, 2004. The community membership was originally by invitation only: "Orkut is unique and fun, because it's an organically growing network of trusted friends. That way we will all have at least one person to vouch for them. If you know someone who is a member of Orkut, that person can invite you to join as well. If you don't know an Orkut member, wait a bit and most likely you soon will. We look forward to having you as part of the Orkut community." During the first year, the United States had the largest user base. By word of mouth various Brazilians began adopting and inviting more friends, in a viral process driven by the blogosphere. Soon after, Brazil

surpassed the U.S. in the number of users and Orkut started becoming heavily popular in Brazil. Americans then started leaving the service and switching to other similar sites such as MySpace and Friendster. This phenomenon was covered by the English blogosphere with some criticism towards Brazilians because they tended to communicate (not only among themselves) using their native language, Portuguese, and not English. From that time, Orkut growth was driven by Brazilian users, first being opened to everyone by register and becoming one of the most popular websites in Brazil.The creator Orkut Bykkkten visited Brazil in 2007, in an attempt to understand the success in that country. In 2007 Orkut began attracting a large number of Indians who were seemingly not intimidated by the number of Brazilians on the site. Orkut also has a simplified site for mobile users. "m.Orkut.com". In 2008, a new feature was introduced for users having slow internet connections to access Orkut using the "View Orkut in lighter version" setting. Over the years, Orkut has also found great popularity in Estonia as witnessed by a survey conducted by the independent research center GfK Custom Research Baltic which showed how Orkut is the most used social network platform in that country.

UNIT 3

ORAL PRESENTATION

Points to be covered in this unit: Introduction Forms of public speaking Features of a good presentation Guidelines for an effective presentation Process of presentation Six essentials of presentation

Presentation is a form of oral communication. It means the presentation of an oral message to a listener or a group of listeners .It may be individual or group presentation. Presentation is the latest method to deliver ones views , ideas ,thoughts and facts for a similar group of persons. It is more effective than seminars and conferences .In a presentation ,a topic is discussed and each presenter is given sufficient time to put his views and justifications. Moreover, now-a-days full technological support is also given to the presenter, so that it may become easy and systematic. When new or existing projects are discussed ,presentation is done to solve coming issues and to manage the work. Intensive advertisement campaigns like road shows ,door to door customer meets ,visits to professional are the types of presentation. Presentation means speaking to listener or a group of listeners with duly prepared lecture ,which is a suitable to listeners and the objectives of the related subject. It is very important than the presentation of the matter should be effective and must be suitable to the listener taking in view the nature and circumstances that influence the listener. An oral presentation is a formal method of communicating information verbally supported by images, visual aids and/or technology to the audience or the listener. The information can be delivered as group discussions, speeches, debates and class presentations. Presentations can be delivered individually or as part of a group, but there is a world of difference between the communication in general and oral presentation. Unlike oral

communication oral presentation is formal ,systematic,structured and intended to raise a particular issue for discussion ,whereas the oral communication is an interactive process. Effective presentation skills form a very important aspect of our communication skills. For an effective presentation ,one has to choose a style that suits to his/her personality or in which one is comfortable and fits the situation We need to be careful while selecting and presenting the material. Speaking effectively and conveying the message correctly are the keys to success in an oral presentation. Definition Presentation can be defined as a formal event characterized by teamwork and use of audio-visual aids. The main purpose of presentation is to give information, to persuade the audience to act and to create goodwill. A good presentation should have a good subject matter, should match with the objective, should best fit the audience, and should be well organized. The main purpose of an oral presentation is to present subject content in an organized, concise and effective manner to a live audience. When delivering an oral presentation, certain challenges require ingenious techniques to engage into an impromptu interaction with the audience members. Planning, writing and completing are three key elements in any oral presentation process. Features of a good presentation/Characteristics of a Good/Effective Presentation 1. The presentation ideas should be well adapted to your audience. Relate your presentation message/idea to the interests of the audience. A detailed audience analysis must be made before the presentation, i.e., an analysis of the needs, age, educational background, language, and culture of the target audience. Their body language instantly gives the speaker the required feedback. 2. A good presentation should be concise and should be focused on the topic. It should not move off-track. 3. A good presentation should have the potential to convey the required information. 4. A good presentation must be planned. The speaker must plan how to begin the presentation, what to speak in the middle of presentation and how to end the presentation without losing audience interests at any point of time.

5. To communicate the desired information, the speaker should use more of visual aids such as transparencies, diagrams, pictures, charts, etc. Each transparency/slide should contain limited and essential information only. No slide should be kept on for a longer time. Try facing the audience, rather than the screen. The speaker should not block the view. Turn on the room lights else the audience might fall asleep and loose interest. Organize all the visuals for making a logical and sound presentation. 6. The fear should be transformed into positive energy during the presentation. Be calm and relaxed while giving a presentation. Before beginning, wait and develop an eye contact with the audience. Focus on conveying your message well and use a positive body language. 7. To communicate the desired information, the speaker should use more of visual aids such as transparencies, diagrams, pictures, charts, etc. Each transparency/slide should contain limited and essential information only. No slide should be kept on for a longer time. Try facing the audience, rather than the screen. The speaker should not block the view. Turn on the room lights else the audience might fall asleep and loose interest. Organize all the visuals for making a logical and sound presentation. 8. Rehearse and practice the presentation. This will help the speaker to be more confident and self-assured. The more the speaker rehearses the better the presentation turns to be. 9. The speaker should encourage more questions from the audience. He should be honest enough to answer those questions. If any biased question is put forth by the audience, rearticulate it before answering. 10.Summarize the presentation at the end. Give final comments. Leave a positive impact upon the audience. 11.The speaker must have a presentable appearance while giving a presentation. The speaker should stand with feet far apart maintaining a good balance. He must use confident gestures. He must use short and simple words. 12.Try to gain and maintain audience interest by using positive quotes, humour, or remarkable fact. 13.The speaker must be affirmative and optimistic before giving presentation. He should ensure all tools and equipments to be used in presentation are working well. 14.The speaker must state the objectives of the presentation at beginning of the presentation. FORMS OF PRESENTATION

There are basically two types of presentation which are further divided into various forms . (i) Individual Presentation: Individual presentation refers to presenting thoughts/ideas by only one speaker on a selected subject before the concerned listeners .An individual presentation is the presentation where on speaker presents his message to the audience. Topic of the presentation is pre-decided. Such presentation is required when a supervisor is to instruct a worker or workers, and a worker is to discuss his problems with his supervisors. It may be of two types: (a) There is one speaker and one listener. (b) There is one speaker and a small group of listeners. Group Presentation: Group presentation refers to presenting thoughts/ideas on any pre-determined subject by many speakers in their own way before the listeners. The group members mutually decide to throw light on the various aspects of the selected subject. The group leader convenes the whole presentation in a systematic manner.

(ii)

Here are the various forms of presentation which are as follows : 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Short talks or presentation Briefing or Instructing Discussion or Group Discussions Debates Meetings Symposium or seminars

KINDS OF PRESENTATION The presentation may be of three kinds: KINDS OF PRESENTATION

Informative Presentation

Goodwill Presentation

Persuasive Presentation Informative Presentation: Informative Presentation is the presentation which aims at giving information about a fact or an idea or a thought. It is a presentation

about a product or a process or a service. It is basically a type of training which gives the information about the work. Informative presentation may also persuade new employees, below organizational traditions, culture and procedures. It may be of three types: (i) Report : Report means written explanation of an event .It is an important tool in the hands of management .It aims at providing clear and detailed explanation of an event or an issue. Briefings : Briefings are the information which explains both the positive and negative aspects of a topic. It helps in decision making .This term is basically used to explain the main points of a meeting or seminar. Instructions : Instructions are the guidelines to do a work or to accomplish an object. Experienced employees instruct newly appointed employees so that they may know how to do their work and to get benefits from the experience of old employees.

(ii)

(iii)

Persuasive Presentation: Persuasive presentation is the one in which presenter convince the audience with his approach and aims at positive reaction from audience .He aims to provide information with authentic proof .In the same way, every business requires persuasion at different stages and times.It can be categorized in four parts. They are: (i) Policy :A policy is an instrument of securing pre-determined goals .It sets the line of an action for an enterprise and directs the employees how to do their work .Policies persuade employees to take uniform decisions. Procedure: It is an outline to do an act. It spells the steps to be taken to achieve organizational objectives .Procedure minimize the requirement of direction and control. Facts: Facts present actual evident ,information about an event .It answers- what happened ,who did it, when did it happen, how much cost does it involve. Facts help a person in deciding whether to invest in a particular project or not.

(ii)

(iii)

Goodwill Information Presentation: It is that type of presentation which helps to create awareness about the products, policies and schemes of a company. It presents the topics which are liked by public .Quiz contests, Relief funds, PM fund and etc. are examples of goodwill information presentation.

STEPS INVOLVED IN MAKING A GOOD PRESENTATION

All successful presentations pass through the following six stages: 1) Specifying the objective: Objectives are classified in the following seven ways: _ To demonstrate a service, product, system. _ To create an image, strategy. _ To entertain colleagues, outside people. _ To sell a concept, product, idea. _ To represent a group, company, department. _ To promote an attitude, a way of working. _ To suggest a solution, a new concept. 2) Planning: It is necessary to plan your presentation before you actually sit down to prepare it. Planning consists of: _ Knowledge about the audience. _ Considering physical factors relevant to the presentation. _ Deciding the structure of the presentation. 3) Preparation: _ To collect all relevant information in the light of your objective. _ Average the selected information in a logical and sequential manner. _ The opening and closing sections of the presentation are extremely important. _ Prepare your visual carefully. _ Check the weightage given to each section. _ Time the presentation. Keep some margin for the fact that actual presentation takes longer than we expect. 4) Practice and Rehearsal: Practice and rehearsal under a watchful eye and accompanied with self-analysis and improvement efforts is absolutely necessary. Insist on a full-dress rehearsal to get its maximum benefits. 5) Getting Ready: Wear a formal but simple and dignified dress. 6) Making the Presentation: _ Great the audience pleasantly and warmly. _ Introduce yourself briefly. _ Make a clear statement of the objectives of your presentation and tell the audience how it has been structured. _ All this while one must sound clear, courteous & considerate.

Visual Aids Handouts Practice Delivery Equipment Tips Delivery Tips Fear and Nervousness Role of the Audience

GUIDELINES FOR ORAL PRESENTATION Presentations are brief discussions of a focused topic delivered to a group of listeners in order to impart knowledge or to stimulate discussion. They are similar to short papers with an introduction, main body and conclusion. The ability to give brief presentations is a learned skill and one that is called on frequently in the workplace.

1. Preparation Preparation is the key to giving an effective presentation and to controlling your nervousness. Know your topic well. You will be the expert on the topic in the classroom. Good preparation and the realization that you are the expert will boost your self-confidence. After your research, you will find that you know much more about your topic than you will have time to present. That is a good thing. It will allow you to compose a good introduction, to distill out the main, most important points that need to be made, and to finish with a strong conclusion.

Know your topic become an expert Learn as much about the topic as you can to boost your self-confidence Have an idea what the background is of your audience is so you will know how much detail to go into and what kinds of things you may have to define Prepare an outline of topic. Bullet or number the main points An 8-minute talk is roughly equivalent to 4 double spaced pages in 12-pt. font and 1 margins - however, never read a presentation. Write out your presentation if you need to organize your thoughts, but then outline this text for the actual presentation.

2. Visual aids

Use Visual Aids When feasible, and relevant, visual aids can be a helpful addition to your presentation. Examples could include handouts, charts, transparencies, slides, or use of a presentation software such as Microsoft Powerpoint. However, avoid using extensive films or recordings which might consume over one-quarter of your time unless such aids are explicitly requested. Your remarks, not the audio-visual aids, should be the prime source of attention. However, selective use of aids will increase audience attention and understanding. Visual aids (maps, photos, film clips, graphs, diagrams, and charts) can enhance a presentation.

Keep visual aids simple and uncluttered. Use color and contrast for emphasis but use them in moderation Use a font large enough to be seen from the back of the room

A rule of thumb: slides are readable from the back of a room if they are readable at a distance of 9 feet from a 15 monitor For an 8-10 minute talk use no more than 10 slides or overheads If using PowerPoint strongly resist the temptation to use sound effects and dramatic slide transitions.

3. Practice Practice giving your presentation to yourself. Speak out loud and time yourself. Practice using your visual aids. It is absolutely important that you adhere to your time limit. Your professor knows that you know more about your topic than you will have time to share. Your goal is to inform, not overwhelm. In this case, less can be more. 4. Delivery To deliver your presentation you will have to overcome your nervousness and deal with room conditions. Good preparation should allay most of your nervousness; realizing that everyone feels nervous before a presentation should also help. Your presentation will never go exactly as you think it will

fortunately, they usually go better than you expect. However, if you are using any kind of technology (overhead projector or PowerPoint) be prepared for something to go wrong and have a backup plan.
5. Consider Your Audience What is their current level of knowledge of the subject? If possible, convey to them information they haven't heard before, or weren't aware of. 6. Be Positive If you begin the presentation with obvious attitudes that suggest that you're shy, uncertain or uncomfortable, the audience will rapidly agree with you and be turned off. If you maintain at least the appearance of confidence in your own ability, you'll reassure your audience and everyone, yourself included, will enjoy the presentation more. 7. Avoid Reading Insofar as possible, give your presentation extemporaneously from notes, rather than reading through pages and pages of material.

8. Get Abstractions Down to Earth When you must present theoretical or abstract material, use specific examples, perhaps including a few humorous anecdotes, to enliven the presentation. 9. Maintain Eye Contact Keep as much eye contact with members of your audience as possible. Gauge their reaction to your presentation and adjust accordingly. If you are a shy person, one way to begin this practice is to look slightly above the eye level of members of the audience. In most cases, they will not notice the difference. However, there is no real substitute for developing genuine eye contact. 10. Involve Your Audience For large audiences, you may have to rely more on a lively presentation and on visual aids. For smaller audiences, you may want to involve them on a more personal level. Some speakers in very small settings seek to learn the names of members of the audience initially, then directly involve them through questions to specific individuals or by making remarks during the presentation such as "Now suppose Maria, here, was faced with the following situation. . ." If the standard call for questions at the end of the presentation falls flat, you may wish, depending on the exact situation, to pose one or two questions of your own to the audience to help them summarize or apply key points you've made. 11. Don't "Preach" Convince your audience rather than haranguing them. Don't try to awe your audience with big words, flowery phrases, or ego-inflating anecdotes ("As I once told a friend of a friend of the President. . ."). Be relaxed, conversational (unless the occasion is extremely formal), and succinct. Above all, be yourself.

Six Essential Steps for Preparing for an Oral Presentation 1. Determine the purpose 2. Analyze the audience and situation 3. Choose the ideas for your message 4. Organize the data and write on note cards 5. Plan visual aids if desirable 6. Rehearse your presentation
To prepare for speaking, analyze your audience, the purpose for the speech, and the message you want to communicate.

Analyze the audience

What is the audience's level of understanding of the subject matter? What do they need to learn from this presentation? What presumptions do they have about the topic? Will the presentation environment be casual or formal?

Analyze the purpose

The purpose helps to determine the content, style, and amount of audience participation. Do you want to motivate or entertain? Inform or analyze? Persuade? Consider the message and develop the main idea. What idea am I trying to convey to the audience? How can I make it interesting?

Plan the Presentation

Develop an outline or structure for the presentation that reflects the subject, purpose, audience, and the time allotted for the presentation. Select the best media to communicate your message in the presentation environment. Anticipate potential problems with equipment. How do I organize my message? What is appropriate length for the audience ,message, and situation? What visual support can clarify the message while maintaining listeners' interest? What support documents will the audience need? When should those be distributed? Develop the presentation Introduction Capture the audience's attention and arouse their interest by showing how this subject

affects them. Inspire confidence in yourself by explaining your interest in this topic. Provide the framework of the presentation so your audience will know the route the presentation will take. Body Adhere to the framework you presented in the introduction as you develop the body. Give the listeners clear signposts as you move from one part of the presentation to the next. In a lengthy presentation, briefly summarise key points when the presentation takes a major shift in direction. Throughout, hold your audience's attention: relate your subject to the audience's needs; use clear and vivid language; and make connections between your subject and ideas to which the audience can relate. Design and present visual aids that enhance rather than detract from the message. Final Summary/Conclusion Restate main points and focus on the main message for the audience. Outline the action required. End on a positive note. Delivery of a presentation Appearance Clothes and grooming Consider the purpose of your talk and how your dress and grooming might impress the audience. Body posture and movements Stand upright on both feet with a relaxed not immobile body and move a steps towards the audience or backward or sideways to emphasise a point or get the audience's attention but do not pace backwards and forwards. Body language Use movements and facial expressions as if you were talking to a person in a one-to-one situation. Smile particularly at the beginning of your presentation when you are introducing yourself or your topic and also as you end to show your positive attitude towards the audience. Eye contact Look at the audience as if you were trying to involve the audience in a conversation with you. You must look around at different areas of the audience and not concentrate on one or two people or a part of the audience, as the rest of the audience would feel left out. Delivery of the content Introduction Clearly outline what you will be talking about. Use language that is inclusive and appropriate to spoken communication e.g. I'd like to talk to you about... I want to explain to you the... My talk will outline the... In this presentation I will concentrate on ...I have organised my presentation into three parts. The first is... to start I will describe ... then I'll ... and finally I intend to ... Body Go from point to point in a logical sequence and use transitional phrases such as The next important point I want to mention is that... Having described ... I'd like to show some examples... Now I'd like to move on to the importance of ... Conclusion Provide a good summary of what has been presented and use phrases that emphasise the importance of thezinformation such as So we've examined the... to sum up let me... To conclude.... Questions You might suggest in your introduction that you are happy to answer questions at the end of the presentation. In your conclusion, you could remind the audience that you are willing to answer any questions. In your responses to questions, repeat the question if you think it has not been clearly heard, include all members of the audience in your response and if you do not know the answer perhaps indicate how or where it might be found out or that you will find out for them. Content The content of the presentation should show the speaker's thorough knowledge of the topic. Particularly in a presentation based on research and sources that the audience may

be unfamiliar with, the sources for the information should be clearly shown in any visuals and handouts or spoken clearly to the audience during the presentation to avoid plagiarism. Each idea or point mentioned in the presentation should be supported with evidence, examples or explanation. It is important that the topics are well prepared and that not too much, or too little content, is attempted in the time given. Visual Aids After the speech content is planned the use of visuals is carefully considered. Visual aids must be useful for the audience to help them understand. They appeal to the visual listener/thinker. The audience must easily see them so that colour, font size of words (no smaller than font size 16), size of diagrams and complexity of information must be considered. Visual aids must be introduced into the speech at appropriate times using introductory phrases such as 'In the following PowerPoint presentation there will be three diagrams that.... The first diagram illustrates... The overhead transparency I will show you gives a summary of ... The speaker should give the audience enough time to look at the visuals and understand them. Visuals must be accurate (spelling, grammar, numbers, and statistics.) They must be fully referenced if the information is from a source unfamiliar to the audience. You should write full details as they were for a bibliography or reference list at the bottom of the slide. Handouts If handouts are given out to be used during the presentation, it is very important that their use is fully explained. Make sure the audience can find, and is looking at, any information that you want to emphasise. The handout could be a copy of an article or contain illustration of information written by you that will be discussed during the presentation. Always remember to cite your sources in the handouts for information you have researched to avoid plagiarism. Do not give too much information in the handouts, otherwise the audience will read rather

than listen and Notes You should try to put your notes in point form and use them as reference points to remind you of the structure of your speech. They are not read out word for word as it is expected that you will talk naturally about a topic you have prepared and know about. Notes are on neat cards and their use is not to be too obvious to the audience. Voice Avoid a monotonous voice. Use pace, volume and stress important words to make the speech more interesting for the audience. Time Always speak to the time given. Rehearse the speech to identify whether timing is correct. Remember the average speech rate is about 120 200 words per minute so plan your speech content for the number of words that match the time length of the speech. Language Remember the audience must understand you. Consider language that is appropriate vocabulary for the topic and language that you are comfortable using and can pronounce. Also remember to use transitional phrases as they help the audience know what is happening and they make your speech sound 'immediate'. Remember, you are there talking to an audience full of living people not the back wall of a room or the carpet. Attentiveness to audience Remain attentive to what the audience is doing and respond to their indications of interest or confusion. If they seem inattentive consider rephrasing your information and

talk directly to them using comments such as This next example is interesting because This next statistic surprises me because The slide shows the model I have been talking about in clear detail. You will notice that You may have to think as you are speaking of ways to explain or keep the audiences attention.
[email protected] 9385 5584

Delivering an Effective Oral Presentation

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Dress comfortably, but appropriately. Be yourself. Establish a rapport with your audience (humor, anecdotes, demonstrations). Be conscious of your posture, your voice, your gestures, and your body language overall. Move around at least a little, but not too much (avoid swaying from side to side or rocking back and forth, and try not to pace). Face your audience and make eye contact. Pause or take a drink of water if you need to compose yourself. Be prepared for questions, both by allowing tim ***Simplicity and Legibility are Keys to Effective Oral Presentations***

9.

Guidelines for Preparation of Effective Oral Presentations

A good oral presentation should: (1) define the problem or state the central question being addressed; (2) indicate its importance; (3) tell what was done; (4) state what was found; and (5) consider the broader implications of the findings. It is not possible to cite all previous work, provide detailed descriptions of methods, or include all the data obtained in a 10-minute talk. A good presenter seeks to make a single point, and to make it simply, clearly, and concisely. Oral presentations are greatly enhanced by the use of good visual material. Good visuals convey the essential material of the talk, including key points and research results. They allow the listener to both see and hear; this enhances understanding. To maximize the effectiveness of your oral presentation, please consider the following guidelines. Specific Suggestions: 1. Clear purpose: Effective visuals and talks make a single main point and tell a unified, coherent story. Organize your talk around a central theme. Develop a clear train of thought that does not get bogged down in detail. Provide a conclusion that summarizes the main points, and raises the important issues posed by the material you presented.

2. Freedom from non-essential information: Unless the purpose of the talk is to present research methods or techniques, omit all but the key methodological details. Save nonessential information for responding to questions during the discussion period. 3. Graphs, diagrams, and tables: Study results are best presented in graphic form. Diagrams can be used to present research design or study hypotheses. Avoid tables, especially those with more than a few rows and columns. Simplify your presentation so that you do not have to tell your audience I know you cant read the table in this slide but Keep graphs and diagrams simple. Avoid gratuitous three-dimensional graphs that provide no more information than their two-dimensional equivalents. 4. Word slides: If you use bullet or word slides keep them simple and short. Do not use full sentences. Do not include more than 5-7 lines per slide (acknowledgements excepted). 5. Projection of presentations: IBM-compatible laptops will be available at the podium for projection of PowerPoint,OpenOffice or Adobe Acrobat presentations. Do not bring a personal laptop to the podium! Please bring your presentation on a hotplug USB device or CD-R. If you use a CD be sure to close it for distribution to a variety of computer s. Macintosh users must add the .ppt extension to the end of the filename. Use common fonts such as Times Roman, Arial, and Helvetica. Under Page Setup, the presentation should be set to On-screen show. If you use the Pack and Go feature of PowerPoint, have the original .ppt file available on CD or USB device just in case. Please virus check your entire CD or USB device. A final word to the wise: Always check your presentation on an IBMcompatible computer other than the one on which you prepared the presentation. This is the easiest way to detect compatibility issues before heading to the airport/podium. 6. Audio-visual equipment: We will provide equipment for computer projection. Given the very low demand for overhead and traditional slide projectors at the most recent AAPA meetings it is no longer cost-effective for the association to provide these media services. ***Simplicity and Legibility are Keys to Effective Oral Presentations***

Process of oral presentation

In the present scenario of nck to neck competition,oral presentation has become an indispensible tool for the ptofessionals to exhibit their skills learning and competence at workplace.that is why oral presentation is being taken with high esteem by the professionals in modern time. There are three key stages in the process of preparing an presentation.for any presentation one can reduce ones fears and develop confidence by focusing on the 3 Ps:plan, prepare and practice

November 2, 2012

Guidelines for Oral Presentations

Presentations are brief discussions of a focused topic delivered to a group of listeners in order to impart knowledge or to stimulate discussion. They are similar to short papers with an introduction, main body and conclusion. The ability to give brief presentations is a learned skill and one that is called on frequently in the workplace.

Preparation Visual Aids Handouts Practice Delivery Equipment Tips Delivery Tips Fear and Nervousness Role of the Audience Evaluation

Preparation
Preparation is the key to giving an effective presentation and to controlling your nervousness. Know your topic well. You will be the expert on the topic in the classroom. Good preparation and the realization that you are the expert will boost your self-confidence. After your research, you will find that you know much more about your topic than you will have time to present. That is

a good thing. It will allow you to compose a good introduction, to distill out the main, most important points that need to be made, and to finish with a strong conclusion.
Know your topic become an expert Learn as much about the topic as you can to boost your self-confidence Have an idea what the background is of your audience is so you will know how much detail to go into and what kinds of things you may have to define Prepare an outline of topic. Bullet or number the main points An 8-minute talk is roughly equivalent to 4 double spaced pages in 12-pt. font and 1 margins - however, never read a presentation. Write out your presentation if you need to organize your thoughts, but then outline this text for the actual presentation.

Visual aids Visual aids (maps, photos, film clips, graphs, diagrams, and charts) can enhance a presentation.
Keep visual aids simple and uncluttered. Use color and contrast for emphasis but use them in moderation Use a font large enough to be seen from the back of the room A rule of thumb: slides are readable from the back of a room if they are readable at a distance of 9 feet from a 15 monitor For an 8-10 minute talk use no more than 10 slides or overheads If using PowerPoing, strongly resist the temptation to use sound effects and dramatic slide transitions

Important! If you use PowerPoint, you must send your presentation file as an email attachment to Dr. Krygier at least 24 hours in advance of your presentation!! Important! Dr. Krygier can arrange for transparencies to be printed but, you must get your original art to him at least 24 hours in advance of your presentation!!

Handouts Handouts provide structure. They can provide supplemental material, references, a glossary of terms, and serve as a record of the presentation. The handout should be attractively laid out and inviting to read. Leave enough white space on the handout for the listener to take notes.

A handout should be 1-2 pages long and consist of:

Your name Title of course Date of presentation Title of your presentation

Brief abstract (50 word summary of your presentation) A brief outline of your presentation including the major points A bibliography of references used to inform the presentation

Important! A handout is optional for the Geography111 presentation. If you would like to provide a handout, Dr. Krygier can arrange for duplicating but you must get it to him at least 48 hours in advance of your presentation.

Practice Practice giving your presentation to yourself. Speak out loud and time yourself. Practice using your visual aids. It is absolutely important that you adhere to your time limit. Your professor knows that you know more about your topic than you will have time to share. Your goal is to inform, not overwhelm. In this case, less can be more. Delivery To deliver your presentation you will have to overcome your nervousness and deal with room conditions. Good preparation should allay most of your nervousness; realizing that everyone feels nervous before a presentation should also help. Your presentation will never go exactly as you think it will fortunately, they usually go better than you expect. However, if you are using any kind of technology (overhead projector or PowerPoint) be prepared for something to go wrong and have a backup plan.

Equipment tips:
Workout details with equipment before the day of your presentation Know how to operate the equipment you choose to use If you are using PowerPoint, have a backup copy on a disk Consider making overhead transparencies of your PowerPoint slides in case there
is a problem with the technology

Consider making print duplicates of your slides or transparencies in case there is a

problem with electricity or bulbs

Do not expect a network connection to work when you need it. Have any web sites
you hope to show available as offline copies on a disk. Work offline whenever possible to avoid slow network response Delivery tips: Begin your presentation by telling your audience what your topic is and what you will be covering. Audiences like to have a guidepost. Avoid reading your remarks Dress neatly and appropriately. The rule of thumb is to dress one level nicer than the audience will be dressed. Do not wear a hat of any kind

Speak in a clear, audible voice loud enough to be clearly heard in the back row. Never, ever mumble Stand up straight, dont slouch or drape yourself around the podium. Dont be afraid to move around the room moving around is good, it causes the audience to pay attention

Dont rock back and forth on your heels, dont tap a pencil or play with pencil or pointer dont do things that will distract from your content. Never apologize to your audience for the state of your knowledge or your degree of preparation. The audience wants to have confidence in you you are the authority, do nothing to undermine your authority. Never mention anything that could have been in your talk but wasn t Make frequent eye contact with the audience. Really look at the audience as you talk to them. Engaging them directly with your eyes transfers a bit of your energy to them and keeps them focused on your content. Making eye contact says that you are in charge of the room and for a presentation thats what you want. If you use slides or PowerPoint avoid the tendency to speak to the screen instead of to the audience. Be so familiar with your visual aids that the only reason you look at them is to point something out. Never turn your back on the audience and try to avoid walking in front of the projector Adhere strickly to your time limit. Organize your main points and rate of speech so that you speak for your eight minutes. You will be surprised how quickly the time goes. At the conclusion of your presentation ask for questions. Encourage questions with your eyes and your body language. Respond to questions politely, good-humoredly, and briefly. Take a quick moment to compose your thoughts before responding if you need to but do not fill the moment with uh. At the end of your presentation, summarize your main points and give a strong concluding remark that reinforces why your information is of value. Show some enthusiasm

A note on fear and nervousness Accept nervousness for what it is part of the preparation for speaking and it is a good thing. It heightens your senses and gets your blood pumping. You will think clearly and move faster. Everyone will feel nervous. A good preparation will increase your self-confidence. Once you get going, your good preparation will kick in and before you know it, your presentation will be over.

The role of the audience Presentations involve both a speaker and the audience. People in the audience play a role in how well a presentation goes. People in the audience have an obligation to:

Listen politely Make occasional eye contact with speaker Take notes or jot down interesting facts Control negative facial expressions Control bored body language Do not put your head down on the desk or tilt your head back to sleep Control the impulse to constantly check watch Expect a Question & Answer period to be part of the presentation Participate in Question & Answer period either by listening or by posing a question. Prepare to remain attentive throughout the Q&A speakers will dismiss their audience Remain seated until the speaker is finished

Evaluation Presentations always undergo some type of evaluation. You may receive a grade, you may make the sale, or your performance may be reviewed by your colleagues. The following is a set of evaluation criteria (D'Arcy, 1998) that are commonly used. Keeping a possible evaluation in mind is a good way to prepare for your presentation. Your goal is to be effective and evaluation criteria can give you a roadmap for measuring your effectiveness.
A. Organization and Development of Content Opening statement gained immediate attention? Purpose of presentation made clear? Previewed contents of speech? Main ideas stated clearly and logically? Organizational pattern easy to follow? Main points explained or proved by supporting points? Variety of supporting points (testimony, statistics, etc.) Conclusion adequately summed up main points, purpose? B. Delivery Presenter owned the space and was in control? Held rapport with audience throughout speech? Eye contact to everyone in audience? Strong posture and meaningful gestures? C. Visuals Visuals clear and visible to entire audience? Creative and emphasized main points? Presenter handled unobtrusively and focused on audience? D. Voice Volume

Rate (pacing) Pitch Quality Energetic and included everyone in dialogue? E. Comments Evaluation criteria from: D'Arcy, Jan. 1998. Technically speaking: a guide for communicating complex informaton. Columbus: Battelle Press, p. 160.

University questions:
1. Discuss essential elements of oral presentation .Or What factors contribute in making an oral presentation effective?or What are the points to be kept in mind while giving an oral presentation? Or What factors would you bear in mind while giving an oral presentation before a large group?

2.Write short note on , proper use of voice while making a presentation.