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Social network service

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A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instant messaging services.

Social networking has encouraged new ways to communicate and share information. Social networking websites are being used regularly by millions of people.

While it could be said that email and websites have most of the essential elements of social network services, the idea of proprietary encapsulated services has gained popular uptake recently.

The main types of social networking services are those which contain category divisions (such as former school-year or classmates), means to connect with friends (usually with self-description pages) and a recommendation system linked to trust. Popular methods now combine many of these, with Facebook widely used worldwide; MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn being the most widely used in North America; Nexopia (mostly in Canada); Bebo, Hi5, StudiVZ (mostly in Germany), Decayenne, Tagged, XING;, Badoo and Skyrock in parts of Europe; Orkut and Hi5 in South America and Central America; and Friendster, Multiply, Orkut, Wretch, Xiaonei and Cyworld in Asia and the Pacific Islands.

There have been some attempts to standardize these services to avoid the need to duplicate entries of friends and interests (see the FOAF standard and the Open Source Initiative), but this has led to some concerns about privacy.

For more information about Social network service, read the full article at Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.


News tagged with social networking

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HP researchers try to tell you who your friends are

Technology / Computer Sciences

created Dec 17, 2009 | popularity 1 / 5 (1) | comments 0

Most people have scores of contacts, scattered around their mobile phone, e-mail address book and multiple social networking sites. Scientists at Hewlett-Packard can tell you which of those contacts are your closest friends.


Want privacy on Facebook? Here is how to get some (AP)

Want privacy on Facebook? Here is how to get some

Technology / Internet

created Dec 17, 2009 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (3) | comments 0

(AP) -- Over the past week, Facebook has been nudging its users - first gently, then firmly - to review and update their privacy settings.


Facebook mines Census data to track its diversifying users

Technology / Internet

created Dec 17, 2009 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

In its earliest days, Facebook was primarily a white and Asian phenomenon. No more. In the first-ever study of the race and ethnicity of its U.S. users, Facebook said Wednesday that blacks and Latinos have joined the social ...


From terrorism to HIV, it's all about the network

Other Sciences / Social Sciences

created Dec 18, 2009 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Similarities between webs of terrorists and networks of rescue personnel may seem unlikely. To an eclectic collaboration of engineers and social scientists, the connections are not only possible, but a potential ...


Informal social networks better at encouraging Hispanics to prepare for disasters, study finds

Medicine & Health / Health

created Dec 16, 2009 | popularity not rated yet | comments 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- Lay health teachers who engaged Hispanics inside their social networks were more effective than mailers at encouraging participants to prepare disaster plans.


NASA Launches Web Site for Teenagers That Want More Class

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Dec 14, 2009 | popularity 4 / 5 (3) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA has launched a new Web site created specifically for teenagers that provides teens access to current NASA spacecraft data for use in school science projects, allows them to conduct real experiments with ...