Social Networking Sites: An Innovated Way of Connecting People

The world now is getting smaller as the people get linked everywhere.

That’s the power of Social Networking Sites (SNS).

SNS’ is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, who, for example, share interests and/or activities. A social network service consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Most social network services are web-based and provide means for users to interact over the Internet, such as e-mail and instant messaging. Online community services are sometimes considered as a social network service, though in a broader sense, social network service usually means an individual-centered service whereas online community services are group-centered. Social networking sites allow users to share ideas, activities, events, and interests within their individual networks.

Web-based social networking services make it possible to connect people who share interests and activities across political, economic, and geographic borders. Through e-mail and instant messaging, online communities are created where a gift economy and reciprocal altruism are encouraged through cooperation. Information is particularly suited to gift economy, as information is a nonrival good and can be gifted at practically no cost.

There are almost 100 social networking sites in the cyberspace that comes in the different nature. It serves for social interaction, education tool, business model, advertisement and even for employment.

Let’s define some of the top social networking sites of our time…

Facebook

With the 800,000,000 users that make it to the top, Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. As of January 2012, Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups, organized by workplace, school or college, or other characteristics, and categorize their friends into lists such as "People From Work" or "Close Friends". The name of the service stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the academic year by some university administrations in the United States to help students get to know each other. Facebook allows any users who declare themselves to be at least 13 years old to become registered users of the site.

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The Web site's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in theBoston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and eventually to anyone aged 13 and over. However, based on ConsumersReports.org in May 2011, there are 7.5 million children under 13 with accounts, violating the site's terms of service.

A site which I spend my almost time surfing the internet.

Friendster

This is my first working place on the internet.

Although it was repositioned itself into a social gaming site and discontinued user social network accounts, Friendster is a social gaming site that is based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The company now operates mainly from three Asian countries; namely, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore.

It was previously known as a social networking website Before the site was redesigned, the service allowed users to contact other members, maintain those contacts, and share online content and media with those contacts. The website was also used for dating and discovering new events, bands, and hobbies. Users could share videos, photos, messages and comments with other members via their profile and their network. It was considered one of the original and even the "grandaddy" of social networks. The service became popular in Southeast Asia and is a major site in that region of the world.

Since the relaunch of Friendster as a social gaming platform in June 2011, the number of registered users has reached over 115 million.

Over 90% of Friendster's traffic came from Asia. In Asia, as of 2008, Friendster had more monthly unique visitors than any other social network. The top 10 countries accessing Friendster, according to Alexa, as of May 7, 2009 are the Philippines, Indonesia,Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Sudan, South Korea, Bangladesh and India.

Twitter

 If you want to shout what’s on your mind from time-to-time basis, twitter suits your interest.

Twitter is an online social networking service and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, known as "tweets". It was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with over 300 million users as of 2011, generating over 300 million tweets and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day. It has been described as "the SMS of the Internet."

Twitter Inc. is based in San Francisco, with additional servers and offices in New York City.

With its limited 140 characters, users can now share what’s happening on their lives every second.

You may now choose your social networking tools that will really suit your interest.