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What is social networking?

Social networking has traditionally meant the grouping of individuals into specific groups. We have long participated in social networking in person- for instance, in neighborhoods, schools, or the workplace. However, he term is now frequently used to describe various online communities. The term Web 2.0 was coined by Tim O'Reilly to describe this Internet phenomenon. The main function of Web 2.0 is to harness the collective intelligence that is created by social networking.

Individuals can participate in social networking via a few genres of websites. Social networking sites include those with functions such as email, blogging, chat, messaging, video, voice chat, file sharing, blogging, and discussion groups and even marketing, like eBay and Amazon.com. Not to be overlooked are the various ratings sites, such as Tripadvisor.com, One of the first social networking sites on the Internet was Classmates.com, which started in 1995. Many computer users are familiar with MySpace and Facebook. These are examples of social networking, where users can blog, and update each other on their activities, post links to their favorite photos, or web pages, as well as invite each other to events, both online and off.

When a variety of types of pages are linked together, from blogs to news links, to marketing site, they are part of what is called, the long tail.
The long tail describes the function of web browsers to favor data that comes from many web pages, and reaches to the edges of the Internet, and not to a few core pages. Web 2.0 favors data that is spread out throughout through the web. This is also called viral marketing, or spidering and this spidering is done via social marketing. This type of democratic sharing is very important to the meaning of social networking. The newest sites springing up address this long tail by including what is called mash up. This is when many sites link are connected and linked to each other. Example of sites that link between websites to spread information are: Squidoo, MySpace, Facebook, Helium, LinkedIn, etc.

The most common ways of social networking are via blogging and chatting.

Chat: Web chat is a commonly used form of social networking. The different webservers and browsers each have their own: AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live messenger, and Google Talk. Now that instant messaging has become an integral part of many people's lives, numerous online chat sites have sprung up, such as Skype.

Blog: A blog is the website of an individual that operates much like a personal diary. Blog is an abbreviation of the word "web log". Blogs vary from one individual's opinion, to a corporation sharing information with its customers, to news channels sending up to the minute newscasts and live feeds.

Social networking is something we are all familiar with in a face-to-face environment, whether with family members, in our neighborhood, school, and workplace. The Internet has now created a new venue to meet members of our newest neighborhood, which now includes the whole world.

Learn more about this author, Melanie Grimes.
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