Social Web

Social Web
Megan Wales
Course Number
May 30, 2011
Faculty Name

The term “social networking” does not completely belong to digital technology on the
Web. Social networks had been studied from the beginning of 20th century with the aim to understand how the members of a certain community interact and which mechanism can determine the interaction itself.
Today social networking commonly refers to all those activities that are carried out
within specific online services that provides free space and software tools which allow to
create networks of people. In other words, a social networking service is a Web site that
allows individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile.
The scheme is the following: social networking services enable users to create a
profile for themselves, by inserting their personal data. Users’ data are not only constituted by vital statistics, but they include a lot of other information which pertains to user hobbies, passions, interests, professional background and so on. This kind of personal data, all spontaneously provided by the user her/himself, permit to create interconnected networks of people who decide to put in common their interests and to have an online identity which fully describes them.
The great strength of social networking are the multiple ways the users have to
interact. Below is a list of the main communication resources used to build social networks:
  *   chat;
  *   messaging;
  * wiki;
  *   email;
  *   video;
  *   voice;
  * file sharing;
  * blogging;
  * discussion groups.
All the technologies listed above are not new to the Web users who had been surfing
the Web during the last ten years, but today we label “social networking sites” those which
“reinvented” these technologies in commercial and non-commercial ways. (3)
Early social networking sites, like Classmates.com (used to find, connect and keep in
touch with old school friends), go back to 1995, while recent phenomenon,... [continues]

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