Social networking services facilitate connections between people for both business and social purposes. Examples include MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Users create profiles, locate friends, and post content such as text, photos, and links. Privacy settings are important and have been debated, with some lawmakers calling for guidelines.
Networking has been used for some time as a metaphor to describe the connections between people. Networking is done for business purposes as well as for social purposes. Social networking services are a 21st century communications solution that encourages and facilitates social networking through computers and the Internet, as well as through mobile devices and their network connections. Being available through the web means that social networking sites are international and even those started in a particular country can grow beyond the borders of the country. Examples of social networking services include MySpace®, Facebook®, Twitter®, Friendster®, LinkedIn®, XING® and orkut®.
Social networking services are generally of little use unless you join them. This is usually done by responding to an invitation from someone who already has an account with the site, or by obtaining an account without any invitation, often achieved by entering a username, email address, and password. On the site, you often have a profile page where you can enter information about yourself in various ways to communicate with others, such as posting your status, sending emails, instant messaging, or some form of sending private messages directed to other members.
After joining, the next step is usually to locate friends, and the service can offer to do this based on an address book. Alternatively, one can generally search for names in a dedicated search box and/or find a friend with many mutual friends and connect from there. You can also often indicate your endorsement of organizations, causes, and positions that have been given an identity on the site. This can be called “like”, “favorite”, “follow” or something similar.
The possible content of posts on social networking services varies by site. Twitter® famously allows a maximum of 140 characters, with extra characters possible on some platforms for direct messages, but it is possible to include multiple links in a post, which can link to an article, blog, photo, movie, etc. On Facebook®, posts can include photos, videos or links, as well as text, and if you message someone directly, such as privately, you have the same options. If you post on someone’s “wall,” you also have the option to send them a gift.
Sites generally have certain settings for your account, and these include privacy settings. The controls given to users and the changes made to controls and their default settings on Facebook® were hotly debated in 2009-2010. In May 2010, four US Senators asked the Federal Trade Commission to review Facebook® privacy policies and establish privacy guidelines for social networking services.
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