by John Greece

Created on: May 25, 2009

Social networking is a web based service which offers to internet users the ability to communicate with other internet users of the same social network in various ways by using a wide range of free internet services for fun and entertainment. In other words, we can say that social networks are forms of websites or for a better explanation, online communities which are composed from many internet users from around the world.

Most social networks offer their members a wide range of free services in order to communicate with family, friends, and the world of internet generally. These services include the creation and adjustment of personal profiles, the bookmarking of favorite websites, the uploading of different kind of files (images, photos, videos, documents, music, etc), the exchanging of instant messages, the posting of links to other popular sites, the participation in discussion groups on specific topics (science , arts, computers, cars, technology, etc), the promotion of business activities on a professional level, the ability to make friends that have common things to share, the opportunity to play online games with others for fun and entertainment, the possibility to write reviews and comments (about a movie, a song, a website, a video game, etc), and many more things.

In addition to all these services, every member has the opportunity to start blogging too without requiring the purchase of a domain name and a web hosting service. Also, the general use of social networks is easy and simple and does not require any kind of special skills. This is a great advantage even for novice internet users who might have minimal experience. Apart from the search engines, social networks are a good start point to navigate around the chaotic internet. They will also help you to bookmark and organize your favorite web destination into categories for future easy finding.

Unlike search engines that users expect the most relevant search results, social networks can provide search results through the communication with other users of the same network. This can be achieved either by participating into the forums, or to a specific discussion group, or by simply asking your friends through direct private/public message or by posting a blog entry to your blog.

More generally, social networks are polymorphic sites and can not be identified by giving a simple title. There are social networks like Facebook and MySpace that provide to its members thousands of additional applications and both are well known worldwide. The same thing does not happen with the social networks of Orkut and Friendster which are popular in the countries of the east. Differences between the social networks also exist in the type of services they provide. For example, Twitter is a social network but it doesn't offer numerous of additional applications such as most of social networks offer and distinguished as micro blogging service because messages limited to 140 letters.

Whatever if it is, social networks can provide to its members great help nearly for an kind of subject.

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