Social networking is in general expressed as an office of communications. The rapid development of social networking that has been observed over the last two to three years is suggestive of its entry into conventional culture and its incorporation into the daily lives of many people. Moreover, it has also been considerable media coverage of the growth of social networking, its potential positive outcomes and concerns about the way that some people are engaging with it, which intern making social networking trendier.

The specified speed with which the online social networking landscape is rapidly developing, social networking services necessarily refers here to the span of existing services, the place of existing services within the history of internet technologies and services, and the rapid development of new tools and practices. These services can be broadly defined as an internet or mobile-based social space where people can connect, communicate, and create and share content with others.

The Social Networking Services (SNS) are making a change in the ways in which people use and engage with the internet and with each other. The social networking sites offer people new and speckled ways to communicate via the internet, either through their personal computer or their mobile phones. There are few good examples for social networking which include MySpace, Facebook and Bebo etc. They allow people to easily and simply create their own online page or profile and to construct and display an online network of contacts, often called ‘friends’. Users of these sites can communicate via their profile both with their ‘friends’ and with people outside their list of contacts. This can be on a one-to-one basis (much like an email), or in a more public way such as a comment posted for all to see.

Particularly young people are very quick and interested to use the new technology in ways which increasingly haze the boundaries between their online and offline activities. SNS are also shifting rapidly as technology changes with new mobile extensions and features. As a result children have become the “Perpetual beta generation2”, the first to exploit the positive opportunities and benefits but also the first to have to navigate and manage risks and dangers. SNS are also on the rise globally. A very recent statistics which made some tracking on internet usage from home and work by the people over the age of fifteen and above in the UK indicates that the UK is currently the highest user of SNS in Europe.

Like other communications tools, social networking sites have certain rules, terms and conditions, conventions and practices which users have to navigate to make them understood and avoid any sort of technical hitches. These range from the propriety of commenting on other people’s profiles to understanding who one does and doesn’t add as a ‘friend’. Social networking sites have some likely drawback to negotiate as well, such as the unintentional consequences of publicly posting sensitive personal information, perplexity over privacy settings, and contact with people one doesn’t know.

The main important aspect of privacy and safety will be on top of mind for most users. This leads to concerns about the possibility of underestimating the unanticipated or future consequences of making private information public. Online social networking has been around in various forms for nearly a decade, and has begun to attain broad notice in the past few years. Online social networks take numerous forms, and are created for many reasons. There is quiet a huge difference from the past conversation networks. An important difference between social networking sites and earlier forms of many-to-many conversations such as chat rooms and blogs is that social networking sites are predominantly based on social relationships and connections with people, rather than shared interest. Online communication has changed from being merely task-based or for sharing information and is increasingly an end in itself.

Communication is a fundamental goal of all education. This is communicating creativity, ideas and solutions. We need to be steps in front of them as an alternative of irregular along behind. We need to be among first to make the most of the positive opportunity and benefits of new and emerging services. There are some services for social networking which are profile focused which is activities center around web pages that contain information about the activities, interests and dislikes and games based or mobile based services that interact with existing web-based platforms or new mobile focused communities are rapidly developing areas.

While the number of visitors to social networking sites is increasing, so too are the numbers of new services being launched, along with the number of longstanding (within the relatively brief lifespan of the internet) websites that are adding, developing or refining SNS features or tools. The ways in which we connect to SNS are expanding too. Mobile phone based social networking services which interact with existing web-based platforms, or with new mobile focused communities, are also on the rise.

There are some types of social networking services, which are profile-based, content based, white line and multi-user virtual environment, mobile services, micro-blogging/presence updates and people search. Services intended at children typically have stricter privacy settings, greater levels of moderation and more limited user interactions. Some additionally have parental controls – for example, requiring sign up, usually with a credit card, and set preferences, such as level of in-world communication allowed. Safety limitations may well make child-focused sites less useful for supporting educational practices and projects than mainstream sites, which make collaboration and contact far easier – factors which bring about their own challenges.

Social networking sites are often professed as closed environments, where members talk to other members. This impression of social networking services as providing a private or other space may report for actions, language and postings that do not translate well outside of their intended closed context. While it is important that children and young people understand the public nature of much of their activity within SNS , we also need to make sure that online activity is understood clearly – as the sum of activity all of the online sites and networks.

References:

Social Networking, the “Third Place,” and the Evolution of Communication, 2007,

The New Media Consortium http://www.nmc.org/evolution-communication

Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship Danah Boyd & Nichole

Ellison http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/