Role of Social Networking in Business

A social networking is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, who, for example, share interests and/or activities. A social network service consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Most social network services are web-based and provide means for users to interact over the Internet, such as e-mail and instant messaging.

Social software applications include communication tools and interactive tools. Communication tools typically handle the capturing, storing and presentation of communication, usually written but increasingly including audio and video as well. Interactive tools handle mediated interactions between a pair or group of users. They focus on establishing and maintaining a connection among users, facilitating the mechanics of conversation and talk. Such as :

*Instant Messaging - An instant messaging application or client allows one to communicate with another person over a network in real time.

*Text Chat - Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and other online chat technologies allow users to join and communicate with many people at once, publicly. Users may join a pre-existing chat room or create a new one about any topic.

*Groupware - The goal of groupware software is to allow subjects to share data - such as files, photos, text, etc for the purpose of project work or school work. The intent is to first form a group and then have them collaborate among each other.

*Internet Forums.- Forums can contain many different categories in a hierarchy according to topics and subtopics. Other features include the ability to post images or files or to quote another user's post with special formatting in one's own post.

*Wikis - A wiki is a web page whose content can be edited by its visitors. Examples include Wikipedia

*Blogs - Blogs, short for web logs, are like online journals for a particular person. The owner will post a message periodically, allowing others to comment. Topics often include the owner's daily life, views on politics or a particular subject important to them.

*Social Bookmarking - Some web sites allow users to post their list of bookmarks or favorites websites for others to search and view them. These sites can also be used to meet others sharing common interests. Examples include digg, Delicious, Socialnetworksoftware

*Social viewing - Social viewing allows multiple users to aggregate from multiple sources and view online videos together in a synchronized viewing experience.

*Social Cataloging - In Social cataloging much like social bookmarking, this software is aimed towards academics. It allows the user to post a citation for an article found on the internet or a website, online database like Academic Search Premier or LexisNexis Academic University, a book found in a library catalog and so on. These citations can be organized into predefined categories or a new category defined by the user through the use of tags. This allows academics researching or interested in similar areas to connect and share resources.

*Social Online Storage - Social online storage applications allow their users to collaboratively create file archives containing files of any type. Files can either be edited online or from a local computer which has access to the storage system.