They define a social network service as that it “focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.” They provide ways for people to interact with each other through services like email and instant messenger. They encourage people to openly communicate with each other and to share their information. They are growing so rapidly that they seem like they will be a regular part of every day life. Their strength is that they can gather millions and millions of users that are all unique. Their fault, however, is their inability to monetize their volumes. All major forms of social networking contain ‘category divisions’ i.e.- a former classmate. They use these category divisions to connect people with friends. There are 4 main social networks in North America, 1 in Canada, 1 in Europe, 3 in South and Central America, and 4 in Asia and the Pacific Islands. And those are only the main or most widely used networks, not how many are in each country. The attempts at standardizing these social services in the attempt to not duplicate friends or interest has led to concerns about privacy.

There has always been the concern about sexual predators and giving too much personal information online. However, law enforcement has been brought in on sites such as MySpace to try to help prevent issues of sexual crimes.  Now the focus has shifted to giving large corporations and government bodies too much personal information. Also, who has control over the data that is submitted is a growing problem.

I used this source because it had a lot of information about social networking services that other sites did not have. There is so much information in this one article. It covers several different aspects of social networking and gives good detail and examples. I normally don’t use Wiki for research but I felt it was appropriate for this assignment.