Blog » Social Networking
Why is social networking important and why should I be interested in it? Social networking has begun playing a greater role on the Web as more people discover it. What is a social network?
A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of relations, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, trade, web links, sexual relations, disease transmission (epidemiology), or airline routes.
Through the last two decades, social networking websites have evolved to become something new. Social networking has diverged and expanded into sites that provide tools and applications for social link sharing, blogging, reuniting with old acquaintances, and making new friends. More importantly, there are a plethora of online applications that empower the web user giving the ordinary web user the chance to make their own mark on the Web.
Social Bookmarking
Digg.com, while not traditionally being a social networking site, has all the hallmarks of a website empowering members with the ability to share information and opinions; it is the social networking world’s Slashdot. Where Google has been well known for accepting IBLs as a vote of confidence, other sites now exist such as Del.icio.us and Ma.gnolia that give users the power to not only save their own personal bookmarks, with tags1 for easy finding later, but have additional features enabling users to search other bookmarks saved by other users. Thus, you don’t need a website to contribute and vote for websites any longer; registering to use a social bookmarking site, and using it to save your favourite sites has started to shape and influence the way we find content.
Blogging
My first entrance into the blogosphere2 was through Livejournal on the 7th January 2001. Livejournal may not have been the first but it was one of the pioneers. Blogging is more than just a web-based diary; blogging gives people the chance to communicate and archive their thoughts. For many bloggers, their blogs are a place to handle social bookmarking; their blogs are full of posts3 that link to other interesting web resources.
Livejournal isn’t the only service. Wordpress, Moveable Type, Textpattern, and Blogger are other blogging tools. Blogger and Wordpress are even more special because they provide blogging tools without needing a domain or any knowledge of how to manage anything but the control panel that manages the posts.
Blogs have already begun shaping the Web. Blogs are notoriously rich in content and search engines have no problems slurping it up. Bloggers and social networkers are creating their own Web of recommendations through their activities online; in the simplest sense, Web novices now have the power to radically shape search engine results.
These days, I use Moonlight to manage my own website. Many bloggers either create their own systems or make use of existing tools like Moveable Type and Textpattern to manage their own websites.
Either way, blogging, social bookmarking is very much here to stay and change the way the Web works.