Lecturas para Preparar el First Certificate in English (I)

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Social Networks

Business applications

Social networks connect people at low

cost; this can be beneficial for entrepreneurs and small businesses

looking to expand their contact base. These networks often act as a

customer relationship management tool for companies selling products and

services. Companies can also use social networks for advertising in the

form of banners and text ads. Since businesses operate globally, social

networks can make it easier to keep in touch with contacts around the

world.

Medical applications

Social networks are beginning to be

adopted by healthcare professionals as a means to manage institutional

knowledge, disseminate peer to peer knowledge and to highlight

individual physicians and institutions. The advantage of using a

dedicated medical social networking site is that all the members are

screened against the state licensing board list of practitioners.

The role of social networks is especially of interest to pharmaceutical

companies who spend approximately "32 percent of their marketing

dollars" attempting to influence the opinion leaders of social networks.

Languages, nationalities and academia

Various social networking sites have sprung up

catering to different languages and countries. The popular site

Facebook has been cloned for various countries and languages and some

specializing in connecting students and faculty.

Social networks for social good

Several websites are beginning

to tap into the power of the social networking model for social good.

Such models may be highly successful for connecting otherwise fragmented

industries and small organizations without the resources to reach a

broader audience with interested and passionate users. Users benefit by

interacting with a like-minded community and finding a channel for their

energy and giving.

Business model

Few social networks currently charge

money for membership. In part, this may be because social networking is a

relatively new service, and the value of using them has not been firmly

established in customers' minds. Companies such as MySpace and Facebook

sell online advertising on their site. Hence, they are seeking large

memberships, and charging for membership would be counter productive.

Some believe that the deeper information that the sites have on

each user will allow much better targeted advertising than any other

site can currently provide. Sites are also seeking other ways to make

money, such as by creating an online marketplace or by selling

professional information and social connections to businesses.

Privacy issues

On large social networking services, there have

been growing concerns about users giving out too much personal

information and the threat of sexual predators. Users of these services

need to be aware of data theft or viruses. However, large services, such

as MySpace, often work with law enforcement to try to prevent such

incidents.

In addition, there is a perceived privacy threat in relation to placing

too much personal information in the hands of large corporations or

governmental bodies, allowing a profile to be produced on an

individual's behavior on which decisions, detrimental to an individual,

may be taken.

Investigations

Social network services are increasingly being

used in legal and criminal investigations. Information posted on sites

such as MySpace and Facebook, has been used by police, probation, and

university officials to prosecute users of said sites. In some

situations, content posted on MySpace has been used in court.

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Holiday on Ice

At 7pm on a dark, cold November evening, thousands of people are making

their way across a vast car park. They're not here to see a film, or the

ballet, or even the circus. They are all here for what is, bizarrely, a

global phenomenon: they are here to see Holiday on Ice. Given that most

people don't seem to be acquainted with anyone who's ever been, the

show's statistics are extraordinary: nearly 300 million people have seen

Holiday on Ice since it began in 1943; it is the most popular live

entertainment in the world.

But what does the production involve? And why are so many people

prepared to spend their lives travelling round Europe in caravans in

order to appear in it? It can't be glamorous, and it's undoubtedly hard

work. The backstage atmosphere is an odd mix of gym class and workplace.

A curtained-off section at the back of the arena is laughably referred

to as the girls' dressing room, but is more accurately described as a

corridor, with beige, cracked walls and cheap temporary tables set up

along the length of it. Each girl has a small area littered with pots of

orange make-up, tubes of mascara and long false eyelashes.

As a place to work, it must rank pretty low down the scale: the area

round the ice-rink is grey and mucky with rows of dirty blue and brown

plastic seating and red carpet tiles. It's an unimpressive picture, but

the show itself is an unquestionably vast, polished global enterprise:

the lights come from a firm in Texas, the people who make the audio

system are in California, but Montreal supplies the smoke effects;

former British Olympic skater Robin Cousins is now creative director for

the company and conducts a vast master class to make sure they're ready

for the show's next performance.

The next day, as the music blares out from the sound system, the cast

start to go through their routines under Cousins' direction. Cousins

says, 'The aim is to make sure they're all still getting to exactly the

right place on the ice at the right time – largely because the banks of

lights in the ceiling are set to those places, and if the skaters are

all half a metre out they'll be illuminating empty ice. Our challenge,'

he continues, 'is to produce something they can sell in a number of

countries at the same time. My theory is that you take those things that

people want to see and you give it to them, but not in the way they

expect to see it. You try to twist it. And you have to find music that

is challenging to the skaters, because they have to do it every night.'

It may be a job which he took to pay the rent, but you can't doubt his

enthusiasm. 'The only place you'll see certain skating moves is an ice

show,' he says, 'because you're not allowed to do them in competition.

It's not in the rules. So the ice show world has things to offer which

the competitive world just doesn't.' Cousins knows what he's talking

about because he skated for the show himself when he stopped competing –

he was financially unable to retire. He learnt the hard way that

you can't put on an Olympic performance every night. 'I'd be thinking,

these people have paid their money, now do your stuff, and I suddenly

thought, "I really can't cope. I'm not enjoying it".' The solution, he

realised, was to give 75 per cent every night, rather than striving for

the sort of twice-a-year excellence which won him medals.

To be honest, for those of us whose only experience of ice-skating is

watching top-class Olympic skaters, some of the movements can look a bit

amateurish, but then, who are we to judge? Equally, it's impossible not

to be swept up in the whole thing; wel, you'd have to try pretty hard

not to enjoy it.

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Extract from a novel

I shifted uncomfortably inside my best suit and eased a finger inside

the tight white collar. It was hot in the little bus and I had taken a

seat on the wrong side where the summer sun beat on the windows. It was a

strange outfit for the weather, but a few miles ahead my future

employer might be waiting for me and I had to make a good impression.

There was a lot depending on this interview. Many friends who had

qualified with me were unemployed or working in shops or as labourers in

the shipyards. So many that I had almost given up hope of any future

for myself as a veterinary surgeon.

There were usually two or three jobs advertised in the Veterinary Record

each week and an average of eighty applicants for each one. It hadn’t

seemed possible when the letter came from Darrowby in Yorkshire. Mr S.

Farnon would like to see me on the Friday afternoon; I was to come to

tea and, if we were suited to each other, I could stay on as his

assistant. Most young people emerging from the colleges after five years

of hard work were faced by a world unimpressed by their enthusiasm and

bursting knowledge. So I had grabbed the lifeline unbelievingly.

The driver crashed his gears again as we went into another steep bend.

We had been climbing steadily now for the last fifteen miles or so,

moving closer to the distant blue of the Pennine Hills. I had never been

in Yorkshire before, but the name had always raised a picture of a

region as heavy and unromantic as the pudding of the same name; I was

prepared for solid respectability, dullness and a total lack of charm.

But as the bus made its way higher, I began to wonder. There were high

grassy hills and wide valleys. In the valley bottoms, rivers twisted

among the trees and solid grey stone farmhouses lay among islands of

cultivated land which pushed up the wild, dark hillsides.

Suddenly, I realised the bus was clattering along a narrow street which

opened onto a square where we stopped. Above the window of a small

grocer’s shop I read ‘Darrowby Co-operative Society’. We had arrived. I

got out and stood beside my battered suitcase, looking about me. There

was something unusual and I didn’t know what it was at first. Then it

came to me. The other passengers had dispersed, the driver had switched

off the engine and there was not a sound or a movement anywhere. The

only visible sign of life was a group of old men sitting round the clock

tower in the centre of the square, but they might have been carved of

stone.

Darrowby didn’t get much space in the guidebooks, but where it was

mentioned it was described as a grey little town on the River Arrow with

a market place and little of interest except its two ancient bridges.

But when you looked at it, its setting was beautiful. Everywhere from

the windows of houses in Darrowby you could see the hills. There was a

clearness in the air, a sense of space and airiness that made me feel I

had left something behind. The pressure of the city, the noise, the

smoke – already they seemed to be falling away from me.

Trengate Street was a quiet road leading off the square and from there I

had my first sight of Skeldale House. I knew it was the right place

before I was near enough to read S. Farnon, Veterinary Surgeon on the

old-fashioned brass nameplate. I knew by the ivy which grew untidily

over the red brick, climbing up to the topmost windows. It was what the

letter had said – the only house with ivy; and this could be where I

would work for the first time as a veterinary surgeon. I rang the

doorbell.

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Social Networks

Holiday on Ice

Extract from a novel