What is a Social Networking Site?

It could be said that social networking on the web is a natural extension of online bulletin boards and electronic mailing lists from the earlier days of the internet. In the mid-1990s, its growth was spurred along with the development of wiki sites, web sites that allow anyone to modify, edit, delete, add content to the sites through their web browsers. (See Wikipedia.org, for example)

According to the Encyclopedia to the Free Dictionary, a social networking site is a type of web site "designed to allow multiple users to publish content themselves" on any subject matter and intended for all kinds of audiences including friends and potential friends, employers, employees, business partners, sex partners, clients, customers, fellow students (past and present), money donors, fund raisers, clergy, etc.

In other words, a social networking site is a web site that "provides a virtual community for people interested in a particular subject" matter or who want to simply socialize and "hang out" together.

Of course, there's no end to the subject matters that concern us and raise people's interests and today hundreds of millions of people have joined one or more social networking sites. There are sites related to friendship, dating, business, gay-related, African-American related, church-related, etc.

In fact, there are sites, such as ning.com, that allow you to create your own social networking site completely free of charge.

Coming up: How a Social Networking Site Works