So What Is A Social Network?
Author: Todd Dickerson

Basically, a social network is made up of individuals or
organizations that are connected through various social
contacts ranging from casual acquaintances to family members.
Social networks are established to encourage connections and
communication to occur on a wide variety of levels.

A basis for the theory of social networking was a study
performed by Stanley Milgram in 1967 that established that any
two random United States citizens are connected to one another
by a series of six intermediaries, on the average. This idea
was made more popular by the play and subsequent movie, "Six
Degrees of Separation", as well as the television show "Six
Degrees".  Current Internet experiments continue to explore
this concept, such as the Ohio State Electronic Small World
Project and Columbia's Small World Project. These experiments
currently confirm that five to seven degrees of separation are
sufficient to connect two people through the Internet. This
also serves to confirm the potential effectiveness of Internet
social networks to build new connections between people.

The first Internet social network began in 1995 and has 12.9
million visitors today. This makes it difficult to comprehend
the rule of 150, also known as the Dunbar number, that states
that the size of a genuine social network is limited to about
150 members. Over 200 Internet social networking sites exist
and the number of members that belong to most them steadily
increases.

In an Internet social networking site, a group of founders
sends messages to invite members to join the site. Those
members then invite additional members and the links continue
to grow. Some social networking sites offer viewable profiles
for members, address books and online social connections on a
social or business level. Many Internet social networks are
open to the public.

Internet social networks are a convenient way to link with new
people, both personally and professionally. Consider that the
senior director of Nielson/NetRatings, Jon Gibs, states that
Internet "...social networking is not a fad that will
disappear. If anything, it will become more ingrained in
mainstream sites."


About The Author: Todd Dickerson is a social networking expert
and professional Web Developer. He owns one of the largest
Myspace Resource sites, http://www.layouthq.com as well as
other niche social networks.