Social Networking

Social networking website have grown massively over the last 5-10 years. A social networking website is a social structure made up of a set of actors and there are links either by family or friends. The social network perspective provides a clear way of analysing the structure of whole social groups. There are dozens of different social networking sites, i am only going to talk a little about 3 of the most popular social networking sites.

Facebook is the most popular and it was launched in 2004 by a man called Mark Zuckerberg. He was a student when he was designing the site. Now 8 years on Facebook has 1billion users that frequently socialise on Facebook. This social network is also available on smart-phone handsets.

Twitter is the second most popular social networking site with over 500 million active users as of 2012. It was launched in 2006 by Jack Dorsey. He is now the current executive chairman of twitter. this social networking website is also available for use on any smart-phone.

Linkedin is the third largest social networking site with 175 million registered users in more than 200 countries. The company was founded by Reid Hoffman but the current CEO is Jeff Weiner. This social networking website was originally launched for people in professional occupations. This is also available on any smart-phone.



The biggest online social networking drawback is that it makes identity theft easier. This is really bad because it presents local authorities with possible paedophiles which is just a general threat. Scammers use social networking sites to trick people into downloading malicious software, this is a big one. This software will seriously attack your computer and will potentially destroy your computer from the inside. Social networking can be both overwhelming and addictive at the same time. If you join every social network and add hundreds of people as friends, you'll receive updates constantly. This could be a bad thing because then you will become a slave to the social network.