Social Networking and Social Networks - A Simple Overview 

Social networking basically means using a website for connecting people who share common interests that can be personal or professional such as connecting old school friends and work colleagues both past and present. These connections of like-minded people form social networks where they communicate with each other and attract other individuals with a common interest to join their social networks.

MySpace and FaceBook are both highly organised social networking sites used by millions of individuals. More recently, commercial businesses that value the ease of communicating directly with their customers and acquiring new customers are successfully taking advantage of social networks to grow their businesses. This may be good or bad, depending upon your perspective. It means companies can access you almost personally, but on the other side, you have means to access them easily.

Most good social networking sites provide plenty of options for you to protect yourself from unwanted communications and give you the option to hide personal information. These days, you should not receive unsolicited communications without first giving your own confirmed approval to receive such information.

Social networking professional people and career minded individuals as well as other workers use services such as LinkedIn to promote their own work interests online by providing work and career history and personal bio information. Networking with like-minded people broadens the opportunity for individuals to change jobs and make career moves. In many circles, you would be expected to have a presence on LinkedIn and is seen as advantageous for those with ambition.

Social networks by their very nature of have a multitude of social networking followers subscribing to very specific niche interests. This narrowing down of interests to a niche means that it is becoming easy, maybe too easy, for these individuals to be targeted for profit driven reasons as well as unscrupulous and socially dangerous persons and criminals.

In just a few short years, social networking and social networkers have taken over the web and it's hard to imagine how we ever managed without social networks.

Social Networking and Social Networks - A Simple Overview