Social networking tools become popular in recent years. With the development of computer technology, physical space will not be a barrier for knowledge sharing any more in the future. In addition to the traditional onsite social networking, a variety of online networking communities were created to catering people’s different networking interests.
Social networking tools support the actualization of connecting people and organizations within the social relationship networks. Social (relationship) network is a social structure with ties and nodes (see Balkundi & Harrison, 2006; Cook & Whitmeyer, 1992; Laumann, Galaskiewicz & Marsden, 1978). The individuals or organizations are called nodes, and the relationships such as friendship, membership, kinship, interest, profession, and so forth, that connect the individuals or organizations are called ties.
Different relationships tie people and organizations with the common goals together. For example, facebook is an online social networking tool that supports the relationship of friendship and helps to connect friends across the friend ties. Its structure allows friends to share their life, their study and work information. MyHeritage( http://www.myheritage.com/ ) is a family-oriented social networking tool that serves the communications among family members. The structure of the MyHeritage is based on kinship relationship and lists the names of the family members according to the kinship relationship. Research gate (http://www.researchgate.net/ ) is a social network for researchers. Its structure is based on the scholarship relationship and allows researchers in fields to communicate, collaborate, and to publish their articles online.
There are other terms used to refer to social relationships that are similar to social networks, such as social relationships, social support, social ties, and social activity (House, Umberson & Landis,1988).
Below are some examples of online social networking tools that serve for different networking purposes:
Membership based social networks
Yammer ( https://www.yammer.com): Social networking for office colleagues and community members to share news, to have conferences, etc. It is a private networking tool which allows the members to share some internal information.
Ning (http://www.ning.com) It is an online platform for people to create their own social networks.
Social networks based on scholarship:
Academia.edu (http://www.academia.edu/): It is a social networking site for researchers.
ScienceStage(http://sciencestage.com/): It is a science-oriented multimedia platform and network for
scientists. It allows researchers to publish articles and information with the format of videos, audios and documents.
Research gate (http://www.researchgate.net/): It is a social network for researchers.
Kinship based social networks:
MyHeritage(http://www.myheritage.com/): It is a family-oriented social network tool supporting family networking.
Friendship related social networks:
Twitter( http://twitter.com/): It is a micro-blogging for people to share their daily life with the short messages.
Facebook(http://www.facebook.com/): It is a community for friends to share their life, work and study in schools.
Meetup.com(http://www.meetup.com/): It is a social networking tool supporting people interested in various activities to meet offline.
Professional related social networks
LinkedIn(www.linkedin.com): It is a business and professional based networking tool supporting job opportunities and professional development and collaboration.
Interest based social networks
Flixster(http://www.flixster.com): It is an online community for sharing movies information.
Flickr( http://www.flickr.com/): It is a photo sharing, commenting, photography related networking community.
Blogster( http://www.blogster.com/) It is a Blogging community.
You Tube (http://www.youtube.com/): It is a space for sharing videos.
Below is an exciting video about some data on social media and how social media is changing our life style and our way of thinking. Enjoy it!
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