A social networking site is an online service, platform, or a site that focuses on facilitating the building of social networks or social relations among people who, for example, share interests, activities, backgrounds or real-life connections. It allows users to share ideas, activities, events, and interests within their individual networks. Web-based social networking sites make it possible to connect with people who share interests and activities across political and economic borders. The appearance of social networking websites started through the formation of a company called Sixdegrees.com in 1997. It allowed users to list their profiles, make a list of friends and contact them. Unfortunately, the company closed 3 years later because many people who use the internet at that time had not formed many social networks. On 1999, it was succeeded by LiveJournal that was created in order to have one way exchange of journals between friends. In Korea, Cyworld was created in 2001 that added some social networking features. It was then followed by Lunar Storm from Sweden in the same year. Then, Ryze.com was created shortly after to link businessmen within San Francisco. The company was under the management of Friendster, LinkedIn, Tribe.net and Ryze. Of course, there are also some advantages and disadvantages in using social networking sites. Advantages are having many connections for both personal and business use, and it is cheaper to use social networking sites because most are usually free. Disadvantages are the lack of privacy and/security settings, scams, identity theft, cyber-stalking, cases of harassment and sometimes it is time consuming.
Popular Social Networking Sites:
Friendster Friendster began its operations in the year 2002. It was a brother company to Ryze but was designed to deal with the social aspect of their market. It is where friends would propose which individuals are most compatible with one another. At