Share This

The Next book we are reading in our social media principals class is Share This: The Social Media Handbook for PR Professionals.  Part one of this book introduces social networking and discusses the changes in media and Public Relations.

According to this book, "More than 70% of the internet population uses social networks in one form or another and the numbers are growing daily.  One in nine people on Earth have a Facebook account, and if it was a country, it would be the third largest after China and India" (3).

The use of social networking has increased dramatically over the past decade or so.  It is mind-blowing to me that so many people on this Earth can be connected just by the internet.  Technology grows daily, as we can see in these statistics.

Something I read in the good that interested me was that networking sites and social medial are actually two different things.  Social networks involve all different types of social media, platforms, and connections, while a networking site is an online service most recognizable by user profiles linked to friends.  They are ultimately designed to enable online socializing.

Examples of social networking sites include:

Blogs: where you can write ablaut various subjects and interests which can be frequently commented on and updated.  i.e. Blogger, WordPress, TypePad

Microblogs: The shorter form of blogging. i.e. Twitter

Collaborative Communities: see users as collaborative to achieve a single goal. i.e. Wikipedia.  Sites that facilitate collaborative buying, like Groupon and Living Social, are also considered collaborative communities

Communities and forums:  There is no typical approach to them
Discussion-based forums: tend to create close-knit communities
Review communities: help people identify identify which products to buy and which are not so good.
Brand communities: for businesses that want to create their own networks
DIY Communities: where individuals can create their own social network. i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn

Content-sharing Communities:  In addition to subsequent conversations, uses video, pictures, links, and music to interact with users. i.e. Flickr, Photobucket, Spotify

Geo-social networks: allow location to be added to posts using geolocation, i.e. Foursquare

Virtual Worlds: Online communities within computer-stimulated environments, where users interact with one another using avatars.

As you can see, there are so many uses of social networking social networking that have dramatically enhanced over the past few years.  These sites allow us to interact and share through the internet in our daily lives.