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                          Introduction
 

Social networking is the latest technological craze.  Recently, a variety of social networking websites have grown in popularity.  These sites allow people to better communicate with each other over the internet.  But what is a social network?  According to Wilkipedia, “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 financial exchange, friendship, hate, trade, web links, or airline routes (“Social Network,” 2007).”  Another definition of social networking is “An association of people drawn together by family, work or hobby (“Social Network,” 2007).”  The term social networking was first started by Professor J.A Barnes in the mid 1950’s.  He reportedly “defined the size of a social network as a group of about 100 to 150 people (“Social Network,” 2007).”A social network is a group of people bound by similarities able to communicate to each other within a system.  A social networking website is basically the same as the aforementioned; however it uses the internet as the main outlet of communication.  Groups of people with similar interests are able to share pictures, share movies, talk, etc. through these social networking sites. In a way, social networking websites are a technologically advanced version of chat rooms. The frustration of trying to keep in touch with the many people in your life has been a constant dilemma.  By allowing a more convenient way for the public to keep tabs on everyone in their life, these social networking websites have solved that problem.  These sites have boomed in user-popularity and have given the masses a way to easily and conveniently communicate with friends, colleagues, relatives and schoolmates.

The internet is obviously one of the most accessible and frequently used ways to access social networks in today’s “.com” society.  Surprisingly, social networking websites were not created until the mid 1990’s despite the internet existing since the 1980’s.  The introduction of Classmates.com was the first known social networking website.  With the creation of Classmates.com a demand in the communication market suddenly appeared.  An influx of other such websites came into being, once they showed to be rather profitable.  An example of a site that was quick to follow was Sixdegrees.com in 1997.  Over the next couple of years, two major competitive social network sites came into existence, Circle of Trust, developed by Epinions and utilized by Ciao.com and Circle of Friends, developed by Jonathan Bishop.  Circle of Friends was utilized on a number of websites in the UK between 1999 and 2001. It began to flourish with the advent of a website called Friendster in 2002.

Most social networking websites are specifically created with the purpose of connecting people. Research in a number of academic fields has shown that social networks operate on many levels.  This easily ranges from relatives keeping in touch with one another to various governments within a country sharing vital information with each other.  Social networking can play a critical role in determining the way problems are solved, organizations are run, and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their personal goals. Overall, social networking websites have become very successful and have dramatically increased in use over the past couple of years.  Many companies have found the social networking craze very profitable.  This is obvious when you look at the giant Google has become. Google has just spent $1.65 billion dollars on the web site YouTube (Wilkipedia, 2007).  Many big companies are jumping on the social networking bandwagon.  A large amount of these websites of humble beginnings, have either been sold to large companies or propositioned for purchase.