Social networking service

This article is about the type of service. For the social science theoretical concept of relationships between people, see Social network. For a list of services, see List of social networking services.

Illustrations showing various icons of some popular social networking services

A social networking service or social networking site, abbreviated as SNS, is a type of online social media platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, activities, backgrounds or real-life connections.

Social networking services vary in format and the number of features. They can incorporate a range of new information and communication tools, operating on desktops and on laptops, on mobile devices such as tablet computers and smartphones. This may feature digital photo/video/sharing and diary entries online (blogging). Online community services are sometimes considered social-network services by developers and users, though in a broader sense, a social-network service usually provides an individual-centered service whereas online community services are groups centered. Generally defined as "websites that facilitate the building of a network of contacts in order to exchange various types of content online," social networking sites provide a space for interaction to continue beyond in-person interactions. These computer mediated interactions link members of various networks and may help to create, sustain and develop new social and professional relationships.

Social networking sites allow users to share ideas, digital photos and videos, posts, and to inform others about online or real-world activities and events with people within their social network. While in-person social networking – such as gathering in a village market to talk about events – has existed since the earliest development of towns, the web enables people to connect with others who live in different locations across the globe (dependent on access to an Internet connection to do so).

Depending on the platform, members may be able to contact any other member. In other cases, members can contact anyone they have a connection to, and subsequently anyone that contact has a connection to, and so on.

Facebook has a massive 2.13 billion active monthly users and an average of 1.4 billion daily active users as of 2017.

LinkedIn, a career-oriented social-networking service, generally requires that a member personally know another member in real life before they contact them online. Some services require members to have a preexisting connection to contact other members.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoom, a videoconferencing platform, took an integral place to connect people located around the world and facilitate many online environments such as school, university, work and government meetings.

The main types of social networking services contain category places (such as age or occupation or religion), means to connect with friends (usually with self-description pages), and a recommendation system linked to trust. One can categorize social-network services into four types:

• socialization social network services used primarily for socializing with existing friends or users (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X)
• online social networks are decentralized and distributed computer networks where users communicate with each other through Internet services.
• networking social network services used primarily for non-social interpersonal communication (e.g., LinkedIn, a career- and employment-oriented site)
• social navigation social network services used primarily for helping users to find specific information or resources (e.g., Goodreads for books, Reddit)

There have been attempts to standardize these services to avoid the need to duplicate entries of friends and interests (see the FOAF standard). A study reveals that India recorded world's largest growth in terms of social media users in 2013. A 2013 survey found that 73% of U.S. adults use social-networking sites.

Offline and online social networking services

Differences between offline and online social networking services

Characteristic	Offline social network	Online social network
Degree centrality	While the number of cognitively manageable ties is limited to about 150, most people report having 14–56 ties at average	Huge number of ties technologically possible, but average number is limited, e.g., Facebook: 395
Symmetry	Usually symmetric (reciprocal behavior)	Symmetric (e.g., Instagram, LinkedIn, XING) and asymmetric (e.g., Twitter, now X)
Affect	Positive (92–97%) and negative (3–8%) tie relationships can be managed using high sophisticated coordination mechanisms such as argumentation and negotiation	Except through blocking (e.g., Twitter) or hiding (e.g., Facebook) limited support to deal with negative tie relationships
Strength	2–8 strong ties and 12–48 weak/latent ties on average	9–37 strong ties and 68–131 weak/latent ties on average
Dynamic of change	Low due to manual interaction	High because of technological support

History

The potential for computer networking to facilitate newly improved forms of computer-mediated social interaction was suggested early on. Efforts to support social networks via computer-mediated communication were made in many early online services, including Usenet, ARPANET, LISTSERV, and bulletin board services (BBS). Many prototypical features of social networking sites were also present in online services such as The Source, Delphi, America Online, Prodigy, CompuServe, and The WELL.

Early social networking on the World Wide Web began in the form of generalized online communities such as Theglobe.com (1995), 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 web pages by providing easy-to-use publishing tools and free or inexpensive web space. Some communities – such as Classmates.com – took a different approach by simply having people link to each other via email addresses. PlanetAll started in 1996.

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. Open Diary, a community for online diarists, invented both friends-only content and the reader comment, two features of social networks important to user interaction.

This newer generation of social networking sites began to flourish with the emergence of SixDegrees in 1997, Open Diary in 1998, Mixi in 1999, Makeoutclub in 2000, Cyworld in 2001, Hub Culture in 2002, and Friendster and Nexopia in 2003. Cyworld also became one of the first companies to profit from the sale of virtual goods. MySpace and LinkedIn were launched in 2003, and Bebo was launched in 2005. Orkut became the first popular social networking service in Brazil (although most of its very first users were from the United States) and quickly grew in popularity in India (Madhavan, 2007). There was a rapid increase in social networking sites' popularity; in 2005, MySpace had more pageviews than Google. Many of these services were displaced by Facebook, which launched in 2004 and became the largest social networking site in the world in 2009.

Social media

See also: Social media § Definition and features

The term social media was first used in 2004 and is often used to describe social networking services.

Social impact

See also: Sociology of the Internet § Social impact

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 suited to a gift economy, as information is a nonrival good and can be gifted at practically no cost. Scholars have noted that the term "social" cannot account for technological features of the social network platforms alone. Hence, the level of network sociability should determine by the actual performances of its users. According to the communication theory of uses and gratifications, an increasing number of individuals are looking to the Internet and social media to fulfill cognitive, affective, personal integrative, social integrative, and tension free needs. With Internet technology as a supplement to fulfill needs, it is in turn affecting everyday life, including relationships, school, church, entertainment, and family. Companies are using social media as a way to learn about potential employees' personalities and behavior. In numerous situations, a candidate who might otherwise have been hired has been rejected due to offensive or otherwise unseemly photos or comments posted to social networks or appearing on a newsfeed.

Facebook and other social networking tools are increasingly the aims of scholarly research. Scholars in many fields have begun to investigate the impact of social networking sites, investigating how such sites may play into issues of identity, politics, privacy, social capital, youth culture, and education. Research has also suggested that individuals add offline friends on Facebook to maintain contact and often this blurs the lines between work and home lives. Users from around the world also utilise social networking sites as an alternative news source. While social networking sites have arguably changed how we access the news, users tend to have mixed opinions about the reliability of content accessed through these sites.

According to a study in 2015, 63% of the users of Facebook or Twitter in the USA consider these networks to be their main source of news, with entertainment news being the most seen. In the times of breaking news, Twitter users are more likely to stay invested in the story. In some cases when the news story is more political, users may be more likely to voice their opinion on a linked Facebook story with a comment or like, while Twitter users will just follow the site's feed and retweet the article. In online social networks, the veracity and reliability of news may be diminished due to the absence of traditional media gatekeepers.

A 2015 study shows that 85% of people aged 18 to 34 use social networking sites for their purchase decision making. While over 65% of people aged 55 and over-rely on word of mouth. Several websites are beginning to tap into the power of the social networking model for philanthropy. Such models provide a means for connecting otherwise fragmented industries and small organizations without the resources to reach a broader audience with interested users. Social networks are providing a different way for individuals to communicate digitally. These communities of hypertexts allow for the sharing of information and ideas, an old concept placed in a digital environment. In 2011, HCL Technologies conducted research that showed that 50% of British employers had banned the use of social networking sites/services during office hours.

Research has provided us with mixed results as to whether or not a person's involvement in social networking can affect their feelings of loneliness. Studies have indicated that how a person chooses to use social networking can change their feelings of loneliness in either a negative or positive way. Some companies with mobile workers have encouraged their workers to use social networking to feel connected. Educators are using social networking to stay connected with their students whereas individuals use it to stay connected with their close relationships.

Social networking sites can be used by consumers to create a social media firestorm, which is "A digital artifact created by large numbers of user comments of multiple purposes (condemnation and support) and tones (aggressive and cordial) that appear rapidly and recede shortly after."

Each social networking user is able to create a community that centers around a personal identity they choose to create online. In his book Digital Identities: Creating and Communicating the Online Self, Rob Cover argues that social networking's foundation in Web 2.0, high-speed networking shifts online representation to one which is both visual and relational to other people, complexifying the identity process for younger people and creating new forms of anxiety. A 2016 University of Pittsburgh study found a correlation between social media use and depression among U.S. adults between the ages of 19 and 32. At least one study went as far as to conclude that the negative effects of Facebook usage are equal to or greater than the positive effects of face-to-face interactions.

According to a recent article from Computers in Human Behavior, Facebook has also been shown to lead to issues of social comparison. Users are able to select which photos and status updates to post, allowing them to portray their lives in acclamatory manners. These updates can lead to other users feeling like their lives are inferior by comparison. Users may feel especially inclined to compare themselves to other users with whom they share similar characteristics or lifestyles, leading to a fairer comparison. Motives for these comparisons can be associated with the goals of improving oneself by looking at profiles of people who one feels are superior, especially when their lifestyle is similar and possible. One can also self-compare to make oneself feel superior to others by looking at the profiles of users who one believes to be worse off. However, a study by the Harvard Business Review shows that these goals often lead to negative consequences, as use of Facebook has been linked with lower levels of well-being; mental health has been shown to decrease due to the use of Facebook. Computers in Human Behavior emphasizes that these feelings of poor mental health have been suggested to cause people to take time off from their Facebook accounts; this action is called "Facebook Fatigue" and has been common in recent years.

Usage of social networking has contributed to a new form of abusive communication, and academic research has highlighted a number of social-technological explanations for this behaviour. These including the anonymity afforded by interpersonal communications, factors that include boredom or attention seeking, or the result of more polarised online debate. The impact in this abuse has found impacts through the prevalence of online cyberbullying, and online trolling. There has also been a marked increase in political violence and abuse through social media platforms. For instance, one study by Ward and McLoughlin found that 2.57% of all messages sent to UK MPs on Twitter were found to contain abusive messages.

Features

Typical features

According to boyd and Ellison's 2007 article, "Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life", social networking sites share a variety of technical features that allow individuals to: construct a public/semi-public profile, articulate a list of other users that they share a connection with, and view their list of connections within the system. The most basic of these are visible profiles with a list of "friends" who are also users of the site. In an article entitled "Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship," boyd and Ellison adopt Sunden's (2003) description of profiles as unique pages where one can "type oneself into being". A profile is generated from answers to questions, such as age, location, interests, etc. Some sites allow users to upload pictures, add multimedia content or modify the look and feel of the profile. Others, e.g., Facebook, allow users to enhance their profile by adding modules or "Applications". Many sites allow users to post blog entries, search for others with similar interests and compile and share lists of contacts. User profiles often have a section dedicated to comments from friends and other users. To protect user privacy, social networks typically have controls that allow users to choose who can view their profile, contact them, add them to their list of contacts, and so on.

Additional features

There is a trend towards more interoperability between social networks led by technologies such as OpenID and OpenSocial. 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. Some companies provide wireless services that allow their customers to build their own mobile community and brand it; one of the most popular wireless services for social networking in North America and Nepal is Facebook Mobile. Recently, Twitter has also introduced fact check labels to combat misinformation which was primarily spread due to the coronavirus but also has had an impact on debunking false claims by Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

Social media platforms may allow users to change their user name (or "handle", distinct from the "display name"), which could change the URL to their profile. Users are advised to do so with caution, since it could break back links from others' posts and comments depending on implementation, and external back links.

Emerging trends

The things you share are things that make you look good, things which you are happy to tie into your identity.

— Hilary Mason, chief data scientist, bitly, VentureBeat, 2012

While the popularity of social networking consistently rises, new uses for the technology are frequently being observed. Today's technologically savvy population requires convenient solutions to their daily needs. At the forefront of emerging trends in social networking sites is the concept of "real-time web" and "location-based". Real-time allows users to contribute contents, which is then broadcast as it is being uploaded—the concept is analogous to live radio and television broadcasts. Twitter set the trend for "real-time" services, wherein users can broadcast to the world what they are doing, or what is on their minds within a 140-character limit. Facebook followed suit with their "Live Feed" where users' activities are streamed as soon as it happens. While Twitter focuses on words, Clixtr, another real-time service, focuses on group photo sharing wherein users can update their photo streams with photos while at an event. Facebook, however, remains the largest photo sharing site with over 250 bi as of September aliabbas 2013. In April 2012, the image-based social media network Pinterest had become the third largest social network in the United States.

Companies have begun to merge business technologies and solutions, such as cloud computing, with social networking concepts. Instead of connecting individuals based on social interest, companies are developing interactive communities that connect individuals based on shared business needs or experiences. Many provide specialized networking tools and applications that can be accessed via their websites, such as LinkedIn. Others companies, such as Monster.com, have been steadily developing a more "socialized" feel to their career center sites to harness some of the power of social networking sites. These more business related sites have their own nomenclature for the most part but the most common naming conventions are "Vocational Networking Sites" or "Vocational Media Networks", with the former more closely tied to individual networking relationships based on social networking principles.

Foursquare gained popularity as it allowed for users to check into places that they are frequenting at that moment. Gowalla is another such service that functions in much the same way that Foursquare does, leveraging the GPS in phones to create a location-based user experience. Clixtr, though in the real-time space, is also a location-based social networking site, since events created by users are automatically geotagged, and users can view events occurring nearby through the Clixtr iPhone app. Recently, Yelp announced its entrance into the location-based social networking space through check-ins with their mobile app; whether or not this becomes detrimental to Foursquare or Gowalla is yet to be seen, as it is still considered a new space in the Internet technology industry.

One popular use for this new technology is social networking between businesses. Companies have found that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are great ways to build their brand image. According to Jody Nimetz, author of Marketing Jive, there are five major uses for businesses and social media: to create brand awareness, as an online reputation management tool, for recruiting, to learn about new technologies and competitors, and as a lead generation tool to intercept potential prospects. These companies are able to drive traffic to their own online sites while encouraging their consumers and clients to have discussions on how to improve or change products or services. As of September 2013, 71% of online adults use Facebook, 17% use Instagram, 21% use Pinterest, and 22% use LinkedIn.

Science

One other use that is being discussed is the use of social networks in the science communities. Julia Porter Liebeskind et al. have published a study on how new biotechnology firms are using social networking sites to share exchanges in scientific knowledge. They state in their study that by sharing information and knowledge with one another, they are able to "increase both their learning and their flexibility in ways that would not have been possible within a self-contained hierarchical organization". 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". Researchers use social networks frequently to maintain and develop professional relationships. They are interested in consolidating social ties and professional contact, keeping in touch with friends and colleagues and seeing what their own contacts are doing. This can be related to their need to keep updated on the activities and events of their friends and colleagues in order to establish collaborations on common fields of interest and knowledge sharing.

Social networks are also used to communicate scientists research results and as a public communication tool and to connect people who share the same professional interests, their benefits can vary according to the discipline. The most interesting aspects of social networks for professional purposes are their potentialities in terms of dissemination of information and the ability to reach and multiple professional contacts exponentially. Social networks like Academia.edu, LinkedIn, Facebook, and ResearchGate give the possibility to join professional groups and pages, to share papers and results, publicize events, to discuss issues and create debates. Academia.edu is extensively used by researchers, where they follow a combination of social networking and scholarly norms. ResearchGate is also widely used by researchers, especially to disseminate and discuss their publications, where it seems to attract an audience that it wider than just other scientists. The usage of ResearchGate and Academia in different academic communities has increasingly been studied in recent years.

Education

The advent of social networking platforms may also be impacting the ways in which learners engage with technology in general. For a number of years, Prensky's (2001) dichotomy between Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants has been considered a relatively accurate representation of the ease with which people of a certain age range—in particular those born before and after 1980—use technology. Prensky's theory has been largely disproved, however, and not least on account of the burgeoning popularity of social networking sites and other metaphors such as White and Le Cornu's "Visitors" and "Residents" (2011) are greater currency. The use of online social networks by school libraries is also increasingly prevalent and they are being used to communicate with potential library users, as well as extending the services provided by individual school libraries. Social networks and their educational uses are of interest to many researchers. According to Livingstone and Brake (2010), "Social networking sites, like much else on the Internet, represent a moving target for researchers and policymakers." Pew Research Center project, called Pew Internet, did a USA-wide survey in 2009 and in 2010 February published that 47% of American adults use a social networking website. Same survey found that 73% of online teenagers use SNS, which is an increase from 65% in 2008, 55% in 2006. Recent studies have shown that social network services provide opportunities within professional education, curriculum education, and learning. However, there are constraints in this area. Researches, especially in Africa, have disclosed that the use of social networks among students has been known to affect their academic life negatively. This is buttressed by the fact that their use constitutes distractions, as well as that the students tend to invest a good deal of time in the use of such technologies.

Albayrak and Yildirim (2015) examined the educational use of social networking sites. They investigated students' involvement in Facebook as a Course Management System (CMS) and the findings of their study support that Facebook as a CMS has the potential to increase student involvement in discussions and out-of-class communication among instructors and students.

Professional use

Further information: Professional network service

Professional use of social networking services refers to the employment of a network site to connect with other professionals within a given field of interest. These types of social networking services are referred to as "Career-oriented social networking markets (CSNM)". LinkedIn is one example and is a social networking website geared towards companies and industry professionals looking to make new business contacts or keep in touch with previous co-workers, affiliates, and clients. LinkedIn provides not only a professional social use but also encourages people to inject their personality into their profile – making it more personal than a resume. Similar websites to LinkedIn (also geared towards companies and industry professionals looking for work opportunities) to connect include AngelList, XING, Goodwall, The Dots, Jobcase, Bark.com, ... Various freelance marketplace websites (which focus on freelance work) also exist. There are also a number of other employment websites focused on international volunteering, notably VolunteerMatch, Idealist.org and All for Good. National