Social Networking

Introduction

Social networking sites have become the focal point of interest for gigantic figures of persons, enterprises and communal organizations. Sites such as Friendster, MySpace and Connexion have been proven to be thriving in bringing entities together founded on affinity and mutual concerns, business-networking, and other common localities of interest. The intent of a communal networking location is to offer services that will implement an unparalleled know-how for individual and expert causes for the end-user. While the sites are still largely limited to less-than-mission-critical purposes, online social networking services are becoming more popular each day (Winston, 56. Social networking sites function by applying an easy to use interface that permits users and associations to construct profiles and blogs in wish of promise gains. This purpose of this paper is to define the origins and intent of the social networking sites; business implementations of social networking sites; successful implementations of social networking; and common failures that have been introduced by social networking.

History of Social Networking

The annals of social networking sites begun to appear in the mid to late nineties and has blew up after any of the initial entrepreneurs'' comprehension. Some of the first networking sites were sixdegrees.com and classmates.com, and by late nineties MySpace was in its starting operations, which was commenced by Tom Anderson. In less than ten years, MySpace has become an integral tool in the life of teenagers and almost all college age scholars as well as juvenile professionals. By March of two thousand two, Friendster was also launched by Jonathan Abrams in California, and for a short time it was considered the number one communal networking location until MySpace moved into the its spot. MySpace soon gained an unstoppable penetration into the market, which was widely held to be the biggest social networking site of them all (McLaughlin. 56). In two thousand four, Facebook was launched by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg. Initially the network was intended for use only for Harvard students, but within two months all the Ivy League schools were included and over the next two years more universities, high schools and corporations were added (Cross, 89).

By September two thousand four, legal issues started to arise, which informally made social networking a major issue. The first major lawsuit that was filed was against Zuckerberg by ConnectU founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (Borgatti, 90). They claimed that he illegally used the concepts and codes while for the site he worked for them as a programmer. But in March two thousand seven, ConnectU's lawsuit is dismissed without prejudice. In return, the social networking sites were starting to be recognized for their earning potential.

By August two thousand five, the domain facebook.com was purchased for two hundred thousand. And in March, Facebook reportedly turned down another offer to buy the site for seven hundred fifty million, allegedly claiming it should be able to get two billion (Avison, 67). Shortly afterwards, the 'Wall Street Journal' reports Yahoo is in talks with Facebook to buy the site ...