Social Networking and Social Network Sites

Social networking is defined as getting involved with people, can be making friends or establishing relationships with strangers, through the web.

The popularity of online social networks through social network websites started in the middle to late 1990s when features of profiles of users, message inboxes, list of friends, and groups of friends who have the same passion for something were put together in one website which was SixDegrees.com.  However, SixDegrees was not very successful and in time had shut down in the year 2000.

While other business speak proud of being the first, being the first for SixDegrees was not an advantage at all.  Though they gave the idea of coming up with different useful communication features which were separately available from one website to another for internet users, the site’s market was not yet ready for the new technology of making friends online.  And because it was the first, technical difficulties were not avoided and that did not please many users.

The technology introduced by SixDegrees, though, was eventually innovated and opened doors to other website developers in the following years.  Friendster which was launched in 2002 became top social networking service before MySpace surpassed its achievement in the United States.  But as Friendster was becoming less patronized by the Americans, it has also become very popular in some countries in Asia such as the Philippines and Indonesia. 

In 2005, the social network websites boomed even more with MySpace attracting more audience to view their site and with Facebook quickly growing making it most competitive among web pages.  One theory why MySpace became famous was because many of its users were bands who wanted to have connections with their fans which fans, especially the teenagers, gladly welcomed.  Other networks are for particular passion like photography in Flickr.  Facebook, on the other hand, was the more open site receiving practically everyone in the site.

It is must be clear nevertheless, that the popularity of these social network sites are not universally true.  As mentioned, MySpace and Facebook may be famous and widely used in the US while Friendster is still patronized by some other countries.  So as Hi5 and Bebo.  As blogging came to the picture, these social network sites also added blog pages as new feature while there are sites that also focus on blogs such as Blogspot and WordPress.

At the end of the day, social networking can be done through sites that you as the user prefer according to your interests and purposes or according to how many people you know are also members of certain sites.  If you are in for business or professional contacts, then you can move away from communities that focus on pleasing teens and choose career oriented sites.  Then again, it would not really hurt if you have different accounts in different websites for your different needs.  After all, many of these social network websites are created for specific purposes for specific people.  What you would have to do is make the choice and be sure you do have the time to maintain such accounts.
 

Bruno

Tags: Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, social networking, social networking sites, Communities