social network
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What is a social network in computing?
In computing, a social network is an online community where people can exchange messages, share information, and collaborate. Social networking sites use software to create online communities that allow members to share files, photos, videos, and music; send messages and chat; and set up blogs and discussion groups. Social networking is about users building communities, while social media involves using platforms to build an audience.
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How do social network platforms help people connect online?
Social network platforms connect people online by creating communities for users to exchange messages, share information, and collaborate on activities. These platforms enable users to connect with friends, family, and like-minded individuals across different geographical locations.
Social media platforms facilitate the sharing of various content types, including files, photos, videos, and music, and allow users to send messages, chat, and share opinions. This promotes community, security, and safety, allowing people to find support, share interests, and establish relationships. Social media also enables coordination and communication at scales and speeds previously impossible.
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What are some examples of social networking websites?
Social networking sites are online communities where people can exchange messages, share information, and collaborate.
Examples include:
* Facebook: The most popular social network with billions of users.
* Instagram: A network for sharing photos and videos.
* YouTube: A platform for sharing videos.
* Snapchat: Known for temporary sharing of videos and images.
* LinkedIn: A tool for business and recruiting.
* Twitter (now X): A social media platform where users post and interact with messages ("tweets").
* TikTok (Douyin in China): A short-video-sharing service.
* Weixin (WeChat outside China) and Tencent QQ: Instant messaging services popular in China.Early social networking services included Classmates.com, SixDegrees, Friendster, and MySpace.
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How do users create and share information on social networks?
On social networks, users create and share information by exchanging messages, sharing content, and collaborating on activities within online communities. Social media platforms enable individuals to communicate in various ways, from one-to-one to many-to-many.
Everyone on a social network can simultaneously produce, distribute, and consume content. The connections between users drive the power of social media, allowing them to coordinate activities at unprecedented speeds and scales. This shift has led to the rise of user-created content, blurring the lines between consumers and producers as content creation becomes more shared and collaborative.
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What are some risks and benefits of using social networks?
Social networks offer numerous benefits, such as promoting community by connecting people with shared interests across geographical boundaries and providing vital support systems, especially during crises. They also facilitate the exchange of information and opportunities for education and career advancement.
However, social networks also present risks, including digital addiction, cyberbullying, and mental health issues. They can compromise users' privacy through data mining, malware, and botnet attacks. The spread of misinformation and the potential for manipulation are also significant concerns. While social media can foster creativity and connection, it can also devolve into a superficial pursuit of popularity.
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How do social networks use technology to keep data private and secure?
Social networks employ various technologies to protect data:
* Access Management Multi-factor authentication, strong passwords, and VPNs add security layers.
* Firewalls and Encryption Firewalls and internet encryption prevent unauthorized network interactions. Data encryption ensures only the intended recipient can read messages.
* Intrusion Detection Intrusion detection systems monitor networks, logging anomalous events to identify and prevent intrusions.
* Employee Education Companies can educate employees on cybersecurity tips.However, social media use also carries privacy risks, including phishing, data mining, and malware. Social networks harvest sensitive user data, affecting even those who avoid social media.
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social network, in computers, an online community of individuals who exchange messages, share information, and, in some cases, cooperate on joint activities. Social networking and social media are overlapping concepts, but social networking is usually understood as users building communities among themselves while social media is more about using social networking sites and related platforms to build an audience.
The online experience
Eschewing the anonymity that had previously been typical of the online experience, billions of people have flocked to social networking sites where members create and maintain personal profiles that they link with those of other members. The resulting network of āfriendsā or ācontactsā who have similar interests, business goals, or academic courses has replaced for many people, especially youth, older concepts of community. The most basic social networks allow friends to comment on one anotherās profiles, send private messages within the network, and traverse the extended web of friends visible in each memberās profile.
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More advanced networks enable members to enhance their profiles with audio and video clips, and some open their software source code to allow third-party developers to create applications or widgetsāsmall programs that run within the memberās profile page. These programs include games, quizzes, photo-manipulation tools, and news tickers. At its best, a social networking site functions as a hive of creativity, with users and developers feeding on each othersā desire to see and be seen. Critics, however, see these sites as crass popularity contests, in which āpower usersā pursue the lowest common denominator in a quest to gain the most friends. With billions of unique visitors using many such sites worldwide, it is certainly possible to observe both extremesāoften within the same group of āfriends.ā
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From USENET to 21st-century social networks
USENET
The earliest online social networks appeared almost as soon as the technology could support them. email and chat programs debuted in the early 1970s, but persistent communities did not surface until the creation of USENET in 1979. USENET began as a messaging system between Duke University and the University of North Carolina, but it rapidly expanded to other American universities and government agencies. USENET allowed users to post and receive messages within subject areas called newsgroups. Initially, there was no standard convention for the naming of newsgroups. This led to confusion as the number of newsgroups grew throughout the 1980s.
In 1987 USENET groups were reorganized into broad hierarchies such as news, talk, misc (for miscellaneous), and alt (for alternative; the last was created for newsgroups that dealt with taboo or niche topics, and it was the most populous category on USENET). USENET and other discussion forums, such as privately hosted bulletin board systems (BBSs), enabled individuals to interact in an online social network, but each was essentially a closed system. With the release in 1993 of the Mosaic Web browser, those systems were joined with an easy-to-use graphical interface. The architecture of the World Wide Web made it possible to navigate from one site to another with a click, and faster Internet connections allowed for more multimedia content than could be found in the text-heavy newsgroups.
Early pioneers
The first companies to create social networks based on Web technology were Classmates.com and SixDegrees.com. Classmates.com, founded in 1995, used an aggressive pop-up advertising campaign to draw Web surfers to its site. It based its social network on the existing connection between members of high school and college graduating classes, armed service branches, and workplaces. SixDegrees.com was the first true social networking site. It was launched in 1997 with most of the features that would come to characterize such sites: members could create profiles for themselves, maintain lists of friends, and contact one another through the siteās private messaging system. SixDegrees.com claimed to have attracted more than three million users by 2000, but it failed to translate those numbers into revenue and collapsed with countless other dot-coms when the ābubbleā burst that year for shares of e-commerce companies.
21st-century social networks
Others were quick to see the potential for such a site, and Friendster was launched in 2002 with the initial goal of competing with popular subscription-fee-based dating services such as Match.com. It deviated from this mission fairly early on, and it soon became a meeting place for post-ābubbleā Internet tastemakers. The siteās servers proved incapable of handling the resulting spike in traffic, however, and members were faced with frequent shutdowns. Members were further alienated when the site actively began to close down so-called āfakestersā or āpretendsters.ā While many of these were little more than practical jokes (profiles for Jesus Christ or the Star Wars character Chewbacca), some, such as universities or cities, were helpful identifiers within a friends list. Once again, there was a void in the social networking Web, and MySpace was quick to fill it.
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Whereas Friendster, as part of its mission as a dating site, initially appealed to an older crowd, MySpace actively sought a younger demographic from its inception in 2003. It quickly became a venue for rock bands to connect with fans and to debut new material. Unlike Friendster, MySpace had the infrastructure to support its explosive growth, and members joined by the millions. In 2005 MySpace was purchased by News Corporation Ltd. (the media-holding company founded by the Australian entrepreneur Rupert Murdoch), and the siteās higher profile caused it to draw scrutiny from legal authorities who were concerned about improper interactions between adults and the siteās massive population of minors.
The specter of online predators did little to diminish MySpaceās membership (which reached 70 million active monthly users in 2007), but it did open the door for other social networking sites to seize some of its momentum. Facebook took the Classmates.com formula and turned it on its head, with a network that was initially open only to students at universities. After its 2004 launch by founders Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes at Harvard University, Facebook at first was an academically oriented alternative to MySpace, but in 2006 it opened the service to anyone over 13 and surpassed MySpace as the most popular social network in 2008.
In the early 2020s, Facebook was the most popular social network in the world with three billion users. Meta Platforms, the name of Facebookās parent company that reflected an emphasis on the āmetaverse,ā where users interact in virtual reality environments, also owned the popular photo- and video-sharing network Instagram and the instant-messaging services WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Other widely used social networks included YouTube for sharing videos, Snapchat for temporary sharing of videos and images, and Telegram for instant messaging. China was home to several of the worldās most popular social networks, such as the instant messaging services Weixin (WeChat outside China) and Tencent QQ, and the short-video-sharing service Douyin (TikTok outside China).