Social Networking

what is social networking :

A social networking service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on facilitating the building of social networks or social relations among people who, for example, share interests, activities, backgrounds, or real-life connections A social network service consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services.

History.

In the late 1800s, both Emile Durkheim and Ferdinand Tönnies  foreshadowed the idea of social networks in their theories and research of social groups. Tönnies argued that social groups can exist as personal and direct social ties that either link individuals who share values and belief or impersonal, formal, and instrumental social links . Durkheim gave a non-individualistic explanation of social facts, argthat social phenomena arise when interacting individuals constitute a reality that can no longer be accounted for in terms of the properties of individual actors George simmel.writing at the turn of the twentieth century, pointed to the nature of networks and the effect of network size on interaction and examined the likelihood of interaction in loosely-knit networks rather than groups.