Today we begin a series of posts about online Social Networking. In each post we will feature one or more popular online social networking site. Today we will focus on the subject in general providing some helpful links to online resources.

Social Networking is hot. It has grown about 50% collectively per year (Nielsen Netratings 2006 pdf).

What is Social Network? It is a place or a way for people to share information online. A social networking site is an online place where a user creates a profile and builds a personal network that connects him or her to other users. In other words, it is a way to seek a connection or bond with other people.

There are many different categories or types of social networks, including:

• Large Scale Mainstream networks (MySpace, Facebook, bebo)

• Social News and Social Bookmarking (digg, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon)

• Social Business (LinkedIn, Ryze) 

• Photo Sharing (Flickr, Twango, Zooomr, Webshots, ImageShack, Tabblo, Pickle, BubbleShare, Photobucket)

• Video Sharing (YouTube, Metacafe, Motionbox, Revver, vSocial, StupidVideos, Blip.tv, iFilm, Eyespot)

• Startpages (Pageflakes, Netvibes, YourMinis, Protopage, Webwag)

• Music (Last.fm, ReverbNation, MOG, Pandora, YourSpins, Rapspace, ProjectOpus, iLike, Splice, MusicHawk)

• Social Shopping (Etsy, ThisNext, Crowdstorm, Kaboodle, ShopWiki, StyleFeeder)

• Sports and Fitness (FanNation, Takkle, UltraFan, SportsVite)

• Widgets and Add-ons (Rockyou, slide.com, zwinky, myBlogLog)

• Instant Messaging (Twitter)

• Other (SecondLife, Friendster)

This image represents another list of social netorking, their categories, and bief description: 

Other Resources:
Social Networking Websites and Teens: An Overview – PEW Internet
Social Networking Awards of 2006 - Mashable
Social Customer Manifesto – socialcustomer.com
List of Social Networking websites - Wikipedia
Internet Safety 1-2-3 pdf - An excerpt from Parry Aftab’s upcoming book. 
 

Next topic “Digg.com - Social Networking Part 2“ 

Socializer image complements of http://ekstreme.com/socializer/.

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