Social networking service: Difference between revisions

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Social networking service" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (June 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

A social network service focuses on the building and verifying of online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others, and which necessitates the use of software.

Most social network services are primarily web based and provide a collection of various ways for users to interact, such as chat, messaging, email, video, voice chat, file sharing, blogging, discussion groups, and so on.

There have been some attempts to standardize them (see the FOAF standard) but this has led to some privacy concerns.

Social networks connect people low cost; this is very beneficial for entrepreneurs and small businesses looking to expand their contact base. These networks often act as a customer relationship management tool for companies selling products and services. Companies can also use social networks for advertising in the form of banners and text ads. Since businesses are expanding globally, social networks make it easier to keep in touch with other contacts around the world.

Social networks are beginning to be adopted by healthcare professionals as a means to manage institutional knowledge, disseminate peer to peer knowledge and to highlight individual physicians and institutions. The advantage of using a dedicated medical social networking site is that all the members are screened against the state licensing board list of practitioners.^[1]

The role of social networks is especially of interest to pharmaceutical companies who spend approximately "32 percent of their marketing dollars" in order to influence the opinion leaders of social networks.^[2]

In general, social networking services, such as MySpace, Facebook and Bebo, allow users to create a profile for themselves. Users can upload a picture of themselves and can often be "friends" with other users. In most social networking services, both users must confirm that they are friends before they are linked. For example, if Alice lists Bob as a friend, then Bob would have to approve Alice's friend request before they are listed as friends. Some social networking sites have a "favorites" feature that do not need approval from the other user. Social networks usually have privacy controls that allows the user to choose who can view their profile or contact them, etc.

Some major social networks have additional features, such as the ability to create groups that share common interests or affiliations, upload videos, and hold discussions in forums.

In addition to internet-based social networking, cell phone manufacturers are getting into the social networking business with phones that allow users to create lists of friends and associates, track their movements even across countries, and create customized maps and alerts that signal the user when a desired person is within a predetermined range. With such GPS-enabled phones, users are able to send out invitations or messages to groups of people based on customized attributes, including location.^[3]

Users often try to "collect friends", or try to be linked to as many friends as possible. Therefore, it is not uncommon for users to receive friend requests from people that they do not know. Some users will create additional profiles that assume the identity of someone else, such as celebrities, politicians, or even their pets. Some will create profiles for fictional characters, such as those from video games or Disney films (not dissimilar to role-playing), and some will even create profiles for inanimate objects, such as the Sun or the dwarf planet Pluto.

On large social networking services, there has been growing concerns about users giving out too much personal information and the threat of sexual predators. Be aware of data theft, etc or viruses. However, large services, such as MySpace, often work with law enforcement to prevent such incidents.

In addition there is the wider privacy threat in relation to placing too much personal information in the hands of large corporations or governmental bodies, allowing a profile to be produced on an individuals behaviour on which decisions, detrimental to an individual, may be taken.

In addition there is an issue over the control of data - information having been altered or removed by the user may in fact be retained and/or passed to 3rd parties.

Social network services are increasingly being used in legal and criminal investigations. Information posted on sites such as MySpace and Facebook, has been used by police and university officials to prosecute users of said sites. In some situations, content posted on MySpace has been used in court to determine an appropriate sentence based on a defendant's attitude.

Facebook, an online social network service, is increasingly being used by school administrations and law enforcement agencies as a source of evidence against student users. The site, the number one online destination for college students, allows users to create profile pages with personal details. These pages can be viewed by other registered users from the same school which often include resident assistants and campus police who have signed-up for the service.

• List of social networking websites
• Web 2.0
• Online dating service
• Virtual Communities