The main focus of a social network is building online communities of people to share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others, and which necessitates the use of software. In the recent past, whenever the topic of social networks is raised our thoughts are automatically switch and attuned to online communities. That is because most of the “Talked about” social networks are primarily web based. The most common phenomenon is “Message boards” that allows people to move along a thread of thought which sometimes takes a form of blogging or chatting. What I have noticed is, at least in my opinion, channels such as instant messaging and texting is mostly used by the younger generation, where the mature public depends more on blogging and listserve type channels
Apart from being a user or a participant of these communities individuals and institutions can also become hosts of social communities. Currently, there are many commercial social networking software available that ranges from CA $50 to couple of thousands. And, these software allows users to
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Instant Message
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Personalize profile
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Customize site layout
And, get higher site ranking in popular search engines as well. With a dedicated server, users can host these networks with databases that consist hundreds of thousands of members.
Some of the commercial values proposed by these applications are
- help deploy own social network on a viral Social networking platform
- improve new user acquisitions, stickiness, user retention
- user participation
- and, similar benefits
I posted some of my thoughts on security and other such concerns of social software last week. Therefore, I might detour from this theme this week, and explore more on the readings and case studies.
Amanda, you were right. I have forgotten to synchronize my time and i was 5 hours ahead of Canadian time….. huh!
