Social Network Service ( SNS):
Social network service is an online service, platform or site that focuses on building and reflecting social networks or social relations among people who share interests or activities. It consists of a representation of each user often a profile, links, and a variety of additional services. It provides means for users to interact over the internet. Social networking sites allow users to share ideas, activities, events, and interests within their individual networks. They are providing a way for individuals to communicate digitally.
Although online community services are sometimes considered as a social network service in a broader sense, social network service usually means an individual-centered service whereas online community services are group-centered. The rise of SNSs indicates a shift in the organization of online communities. While websites dedicated to communities of interest still exist and prosper, SNSs are primarily organized around people, not interests. Early public online communities such as Usenet and public discussion forums were structured by topics or according to topical hierarchies, but social network sites are structured as personal (or "egocentric") networks, with the individual at the center of their own community.
The most popular are Facebook, Bebo and Twitter widely used worldwide, MySpace and LinkedIn being the most widely used in North America, Nexopia (mostly in Canada) Bebo,] Hi5, Hyves (mostly in The Netherlands), StudiVZ (mostly in Germany), iWiW (mostly in Hungary), Tuenti (mostly in Spain), Nasza-Klasa (mostly in Poland),Decayenne, Tagged, XING, Badoo and Skyrock in parts of Europe,Orkut and Hi5 in South America, India and Central America, and Friendster, Mixi, Multiply, Orkut, Wretch, renren and Cyworld in Asia and the Pacific Islands and Orkut and Facebook in India.
Few social networks currently charge money for membership. Companies such as MySpace and Facebook sell online advertising on their site.
Early social networking on the World Wide Web began in the form of generalized online communities such as Theglobe.com (1994), Geocities (1994) and Tripod.com (1995). Many of these early communities focused on bringing people together to interact with each other through chat rooms, and encouraged users to share personal information and ideas via personal webpages by providing easy-to-use publishing tools and free or inexpensive webspace. Some communities such as Classmates.com took a different approach by simply having people link to each other via email addresses. In the late 1990s, user profiles became a central feature of social networking sites, allowing users to compile lists of "friends" and search for other users with similar interests.
New social networking methods were developed by the end of the 1990s, and many sites began to develop more advanced features for users to find and manage friends. This newer generation of social networking sites began to flourish with the emergence of Friendster in 2002, and soon became part of the internet mainstream. Friendster was followed by MySpace and LinkedIn a year later, and finally, Bebo. Attesting to the rapid increase in social networking sites' popularity, by 2005, MySpace was reportedly getting more page views than Google. Facebook, launched in 2004, has since become the largest social networking site in the world.
Anyone who wishes to create a niche social network site can do so on Ning, a platform and hosting service that encourages users to create their own SNSs.
Advantages:
- It is an easy way to create friendship relationship.
- It is inexpensive mean for socializing.
- The individual can use it to address various social, environmental, political, economical issues.
- People can reunite with old friends.
- It can help people stay connected with current friends
- It is offering no limitations of physical boundaries.
- The boundaries of race, colour etc. are not found as one can choose to be a friend with anyone without any bias.
- It enhances real life social skills, however, other people think the opposite is done through socializing and communicating online.
- It facilitates dating especially for those who don't have the skill to propose a date in the real world. It can be used in online dating.
- It is an easy way in creating friendship especially those who are shy in real life and do not feel at ease in face to face communication.
- It kills time.
- Members publish news stories.
- The user can add links.
- It helps people involved in various activities related to their favourite hobby.
- Some of these websites give information and knowledge about many topics.
- Many sites enables users to choose privacy settings, so they can control who can see their data such as profile.
- It gives the opportunity to express personal opinions.
- Communicating with friends can be private or public.
- Users can create fan pages and groups.
- It is a kind of entertainment through many applications.
- The user can play games.
- It can be used for educational purposes. Students collaborate with other students on academic projects, research or to interact with professors and teachers. Educational social networks are becoming extremely popular within the educational system today. Most of the colleges and universities have their personal websites where only the students can join. Some Alumni also have their own websites.
- It allows sharing information and ideas between individuals.
- In one place, the individual can have multiple applications and features.
- The individual can have a personal page.
- The individual can have a profile.
- The individual can upload pictures.
- The individual can post blog entries for others to read.
- The user can search for other users with similar interests.
- Some social networks offer the chance to create groups that share common interests.
- The user can upload or stream live videos.
- Some sites provide blogging services.
- Some sites provide chatting
- The user can have friends from all the world without traveling or meeting them personally, but can meet them in groups on the internet.
- The user can follow others' news, opinions,… even if he or she does not know them personally.
- The user can hold discussions in forums.
- Geosocial networking provides internet mapping services to organize user participation around geographic features and their attributes.
- There is also a trend for more interoperability between social networks led by technologies.
- To protect user privacy, social networks usually have privacy settings to allow users to choose who can view their profile, contact them, add them to their list of contacts,…..
- it is possible to upload certain programs and softwares from other websites to add more applications than the ones offered by the social network service websites.
- Social networks are also being used by teachers and students as a communication tool. Because many students are already using a wide-range of social networking sites, teachers have begun to familiarize themselves with this trend and are now using it to their advantage. Teachers and professors are doing everything from creating chat-room forums and groups to extend classroom discussion, posting assignments, tests and quizzes, assisting with homework outside of the classroom setting,….. Social networks are also being used to foster teacher-parent communication. These sites make it possible and more convenient for parents to ask questions and voice concerns without having to meet face-to-face.
- College students are using the services to network with professionals for internship and job opportunities.
- It can be used to look for new jobs.
- The use of online social networks by libraries is also an increasingly prevalent and growing tool that is being used to communicate with more potential library users, as well as extending the services provided by individual libraries.
- Social networks are being used by activists.
- Individuals are doing small businesses by selling and promoting their products through these websites. Social networking websites generate a lot of business. These sites enable the establishment of one's business among a wide variety of prospective clients. One can have better promotional techniques by posting links to his/her business site, visit community boards to learn about the members' preferences, and even have ads only with minimal fees. One can truly maximize one's own business potential by participating in social networking sites.
- Social networking is allowing scientific groups to expand their knowledge base and share ideas, and without these new means of communicating their theories might become "isolated and irrelevant".
- It has a role in creating positive self-image.
- It is used in business. It helps the user to advance within his/her career or industry. Generally business companies have their own online community where employees can interact with each other. They can also answer questions posted by customers. It can be used by organizations to create profiles to advertise products and services. It can enhance existing businesses. It is used to sell merchandise. Companies have found that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are great ways to build their brand image.
- It can lead to group communication.
- Mobile social networking has become popular. In most mobile communities, mobile phone users can now create their own profiles, make friends, participate in chat rooms, create chat rooms, hold private conversations, share photos and videos, and share blogs by using their mobile phone. Mobile phone users are basically open to every option that someone sitting on the computer has. Some companies provide wireless services which allow their customers to build their own mobile community and brand it, but one of the most popular wireless services for social networking in North America is Facebook Mobile.
- It is used in investigations.
Disadvantages:
- There is a privacy concern. The user is putting out information about his or her name, location, age, gender, and many other types of information that he or she may not want to let others know.
- There is a potential for failure of security precautions.
- It is time consuming.
- Some people are having wrong profiles, writing untrue information about themselves.
- Identity theft can happen.
- It is hard to be sure of the identity of people we meet in these sites.
- It leads to internet addiction.
- It can lead to Cyberstalking, where the stalker uses electronic media such as the internet to pursue or harass another person.
- It can be used to emotionally abuse individuals.
- The intention to cause anger is found a lot in these sites.
- The intention to create arguments and debates for bad purposes such as destroying relations between people, groups, countries, races,…..
- Racism can be found.
- Spamming is found.
- Some social networking sites sell one's personal information to anyone who wants to buy it. Even if the terms of understanding claim that no personal information will be sold, the site can change its policy at any time.
- Copyright infringement is found in these sites. For example, if blogs or other original content is published at a site, the site can take over copyright privileges in unlimited ways. Few writers, artists and musicians are aware of this and forget to read the terms of understanding in order to find out what can happen to their works.
- Online Bullying (also known as Cyber-Bullying) is widespread. It is the virtual equal of the real-life Bullying. For instance, a person can post offensive remarks or pictures that could potentially cause a great amount of emotional pain for another individual. In some cases one creates a profile for real life person in manner which can ruin that person's reputation by publishing offensive material.
- It is sometimes used to spread negative sentiments.
- It can spread rumors.
- It is weakening long distance relationship.
- It is weakening and decreasing interpersonal face to face communication.
- Some sites are hard to use and have many features that are complicated.
- The user should have computer and internet skills.
- Nowadays, there are many social networking sites, so reuniting with an old friend is a bit difficult.
- Many users accept the terms of service without reading.
- Beginners are always not aware of privacy settings and many applications.
- Anything posted on the site are saved even if the user deleted information.
- When there is a technical problem in a site, many users miss important tasks, assignments, relations,…in their lives.
- Structural variations around visibility and access are one of the primary ways that SNSs differentiate themselves from each other.
- The word "Friends" which is used in certain sites is a misleading word because not all the people in the individual contact list are friends.
- In some sites, being a friend of a person allows exposing to his or her friends which is raising a privacy issue.
- Some friends can post public messages that should not be showed to the public.
- Some friends can post embarrassing messages in public.
- Some sites are directed to specific geographical regions, linguistic groups, ethnic groups, countries, areas,…
- English language is dominating these sites. It is considered cultural imperialism for countries with different native languages.
- The user should have a good level of English language.
- Electronic devices have sometimes electronic and technical problems.
- The user should have computer and internet skills.
- The terms used in these sites are used in people daily lives even if their native language is not English.
- Some people do not trust these websites, so they are missing many activities done by their friends on the internet on SNS.
- Facebooking is a new phenomenon found online which is browsing people profiles on facebook and it is found on other sites too.
- Receiving emails from strangers thinking that they are the person's friends is annoying for many people.
- Receiving emails to join these websites from strangers is annoying many people.
- People can find sexual harassment especially from adults to minors.
- Crimes can be done through knowing personal information and status.
- Poor people can not have access to these sites and services.
- It is considered expensive for low social classes.
- Some users are pretending being celebrities in these sites.
- There are many people having the same name which are confusing their friends and relatives.
- Researchers are using information and data available online about users to conduct research studies but the users do not know that they are under study.
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