See also: service networking , social network, and List of social networking websites
A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instant messaging services.
The main types of social networking services are those which contain category divisions (such as former school-year or classmates), means to connect with friends (usually with self-description pages) and a recommendation system linked to trust. Popular methods now combine many of these, with Facebook and Twitter widely used worldwide; MySpace and LinkedIn being the most widely used in North America; Nexopia (mostly in Canada); Bebo, Hi5, StudiVZ (mostly in Germany), iWiW (mostly in Hungary), Tuenti (mostly in Spain), Decayenne, Tagged, XING;, Badoo and Skyrock in parts of Europe; Orkut and Hi5 in South America and Central America; and Friendster, Mixi, Multiply, Orkut, Wretch, Xiaonei and Cyworld in Asia and the Pacific Islands and Orkut and Facebook in India.
There have been some attempts to standardize these services to avoid the need to duplicate entries of friends and interests (see the FOAF standard and the Open Source Initiative), but this has led to some concerns about privacy.
History
The notion that individual computers linked electronically could form the basis of computer mediated social interaction and networking was suggested early on . There were many early efforts to support social networks via computer-mediated communication, including Usenet, ARPANET, LISTSERV, bulletin board services (BBS) and EIES: Murray Turoff's server-based Electronic Information Exchange Service (Turoff and Hiltz, 1978, 1993). The Information Routing Group developed a schema about how the proto-Internet might support this.
Early social networking websites started in the form of generalized online communities such as The WELL (1985), Theglobe.com (1994), Geocities (1994) and Tripod (1995). These early communities focused on bringing people together to interact with each other through chat rooms, and share personal information and ideas around any topics via personal homepage publishing tools which was a precursor to the blogging phenomenon. Some communities took a different approach by simply having people link to each other via email addresses. These sites included Classmates.com (1995), focusing on ties with former school mates, and SixDegrees.com (1997), focusing on indirect ties. User profiles could be created, messages sent to users held on a “friends list” and other members could be sought out who had similar interests to yours in their profiles (Boyd & Ellison 2007, p. 3). Whilst these features had existed in some form before SixDegrees.com came about, this would be the first time these functions were available in one package. Despite these new developments (that would later catch on and become immensely popular), the website simply wasn’t profitable and eventually shut down (Boyd & Ellison 2007, p. 3). It was even described by the website’s owner as "simply ahead of its time." One such model of social networking that came about in 1999 was trust-based, such as that developed by Epinions.com. Innovations included not only showing who is "friends" with whom, but giving users more control over content and connectivity. Between 2002 and 2004, three social networking sites emerged as the most popular form of these sites in the world, causing such sites to become part of mainstream users globally. First there was Friendster (which Google tried to acquire in 2003), then, MySpace, and finally, Bebo. By 2005, MySpace, emergent as the biggest of them all, was reportedly getting more page views than Google. 2004 saw the emergence of Facebook, a competitor, also rapidly growing in size. In 2006, Facebook opened up to the non US college community, and together with allowing externally-developed add-on applications, and some applications enabled the graphing of a user's own social network - thus linking social networks and social networking, became the largest and fastest growing site in the world, not limited by particular geographical followings.
Social networking began to flourish as a component of business internet strategy at around March 2005 when Yahoo launched Yahoo! 360°. In July 2005 News Corporation bought MySpace, followed by ITV (UK) buying Friends Reunited in December 2005. Various social networking sites have sprung up catering to different languages and countries. It is estimated that combined there are now over 200 social networking sites using these existing and emerging social networking models, without counting the niche social networks (also referred to as vertical social networks) made possible by services such as Ning. Twitter now has recently (2009) eclipsed many other social network services and although lacking in some of what were considered the essential aspects of a SNS, has allowed add-on services to connect and supply these services via its public API.
Social impacts
See also: Gender differences in social network service useAn increasing number of academic commentators are becoming interested in studying Facebook and other social networking tools. Social science researchers have begun to investigate what the impact of this might be on society. Typical articles have investigated issues such as Identity (Boyd 2006), Privacy, E-learning (Mazer, Murphy & Simonds 2007), Social capital (Ellison, Steinfield & Lampe 2007) and Teenage use.
A special issue of the Journal for Computer-Mediated Communications was dedicated to studies of social network sites. Included in this issue is an introduction to social network sites (Boyd & Ellison 2007, p. 3).
A 2008 book published by Forrester Research, Inc. titled Groundswell builds on a 2006 Forrester Report about social computing and used the term "groundswell" to refer to "a spontaneous movement of people using online tools to connect, take charge of their own experience, and get what they need--information, support, ideas, products, and bargaining power--from each other."
Adam Acar, PhD candidate in the Department of Communication Sciences has studied how online social networking members are "one-and-a-half times the number expected in real life." In his article "Antecedents and Consequences of Online Social Networking Behavior" he depicts how the average user of facebook has about 217 members (Hill and Dunbar, 2003). He also states that "Perceived lower risk of accepting new members, easiness of requesting a membership, social desirability and failing to exclude members who actually are no longer contacted, might have cause online social networking to be larger than real networks."
It has not taken long for social networking sites to become prevalent amongst the youth. The reason for this has been brought up by Danah Boyd. Contemporary youth has consistently been presented restrictions that prohibit what they can and cannot do. There has been a rapid increase in curfew legislation along with loitering laws. All of which have been dedicated to the prevention of teen violence and to reduce their involvement in drugs. In addition to government rules and regulations teenagers face another authority, parental figures. Parents and/or guardians tend to place rules on where they can be and when they can be there. This combination of laws and household restrictions hinders and limits the area of social interaction to school and maybe with nearby neighbors. As a result the youth turns to online networks that allow them to communicate with not only their friend circle but others with similar interests. Social networks have ultimately become the best frontier for teenagers to interact and socialize.
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. Examples include SixDegrees.org, TakingITGlobal, Care2, Idealist.org, WiserEarth, OneWorldTV, FreeRepublic, OneClimate and Network for Good. The charity badge is often used within the above context.
Typical structure
Basics
In general, social networking services allow users to create a profile for themselves, and can be broken down into two broad categories: internal social networking (ISN); and external social networking (ESN) sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Bebo. Both types can increase the feeling of community among people. An ISN is a closed/private community that consists of a group of people within a company, association, society, education provider and organization or even an "invite only" group created by a user in an ESN. An ESN is open/public and available to all web users to communicate and are designed to attract advertisers. ESN's can be smaller specialised communities (i.e. linked by a single common interest eg TheSocialGolfer, ACountryLife.Com, Great Cooks Community) or they can be large generic social networking sites (eg MySpace, Facebook etc).
However, whether specialized or generic there is commonality
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