Why Do People Use Online Social Networks?

People use social networks for a number of reasons, depending on the type of network and their motivation.

Connecting with Family and Friends

Some people use social networks to connect with real-world friends or family. When you and your friends are all joined on Facebook, for example, you can upload a single picture or message and all of the people you know can check your page and see the message. The same is true for pictures of your new baby, news about your upcoming move, or any other information you want to mass distribute. This makes communication streamlined and easy; instead of sending twenty emails to announce you are changing your cell phone number, for example, you can just update your Facebook page or send a tweet to your entire network with the new information.

Finding Jobs

Some people use social networks to find jobs. Sites such as LinkedIn allow people to make professional connections, facilitating job hunting and allowing you to get your resume and information out there to more people than you would ever meet in a traditional local networking event.

Finding Friends and Dates

Some use social networks to find new friends, or even to find dates. You can join groups about things you are interested in, start up conversations with people who are in the same group, and build a whole virtual world for yourself using these online social networks.

Purpose of an Online Social Network

The dictionary defines a social network as:

An association of people drawn together by family, work or hobby. The term was first coined by professor J. A. Barnes in the 1950s, who defined the size of a social network as a group of about 100 to 150 people. On the Web, social networking sites have millions of members.

An online social network is a group of people who connect online and who use the power of the Internet to meet new people and stay in touch with the old. It is a new-age, technologically-based spin on the social networks of old, in which like-minded people with similar interests came together to form relationships.

Online social networks can be internal or external. An internal online social network is a smaller, more private group of people who use the Internet to facilitate communication with each other. An external social network is a network that is open to anyone, so millions of users can join, to make friends with new people or to have an exciting new way to keep in contact with their old friends.

Joining a Network

Users generally join a social network by creating a profile. The profile may include personal details, such as your name (or a "screen name" which is an online alias), photographs, your age or any other information you want to share with the world.

These networks then provide you with the opportunity to form relationships online in their community. On many networks, you do this by requesting (or accepting) requests from others who want to form a relationship. This may be called "friending" or some other related term.

Within the social networking websites, you then have the opportunity to communicate and share with your "friends." Some sites allow you to send brief updates on a regular basis (such as Twitter, where you can "tweet" to your followers). Others allow you to post pictures, write messages on "walls" or otherwise communicate with your network of "friends" through the social network.

Ultimately, most people use social networks to communicate, to talk, to share and to grow their relationships and build new ones. It is the same, age old principle of networking... just applied in a very new way.