Social Networks

Social networks are one of the newest trends in online applications. While the concept of using a group of connected people in a network setting dates back to the 19th century, it is only recently that this idea has been implemented on such a large and worldwide scale. Essentially, an online social network is a place where a person can connect to all of their associates in one place and send and receive information about the people that are in the same work. Although the history of online social networks was started with the early bulletin board service, the real time aspect of current online technology has seen the trend grow exponentially. The first real online social networks began in 1994 and 1995 with the Geocities websites and tripod.com. However, the main area where the idea began to take shape was when popular ISP providers like America Online integrated social networking features into their software packages. The concept quickly gained an audience and these features vaulted AOL and CompuServe into billion dollar enterprises when it was found that people were willing to pay large amounts of money for the new services. The emergence of high speed connections led to several new social networking sites at the turn of the millennium. Friendster, MySpace, and LinkedIn were the first successful examples of these networks, all coming in 2002 and 2003. However, the appearance of Facebook in 2004 trumped all of these early contenders. With over 600 million users across the globe, Facebook has established itself as the current king of social networking sites. In addition to the previously mentioned websites, it is thought that over 200 social networks exist online using different topics and methods to unite users who share common ideas. The reason that social networks have become so successful is because they give a person the opportunity to have rapid and easy communication in real time.