Backgrounds and Motivations
Social networking sites like Facebook have emerged recently as one of the hottest names on the Internet, with daily news reports of new partnerships, advertising initiatives and acquisition activity. Indeed, several of the top six social networking sites – Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Hi5, Orkut and Friendster - rank among the top 10 most-visited websites globally. Unsurprisingly, the growth in interest in social networking has led to a number of important deals by major online brands and media firms. These include News Corp' s July 2005 acquisition of MySpace for US$580m and more recently Microsoft' s purchase of a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240m, a purchase price that values the entire company, which has annual revenue of some $100-150m, at an impressive $15bn.
A social networking service (SNS) is a platform to build social networks or social relations among people who, for example, share interests, activities, backgrounds, or real-life connections. 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. Online community services are sometimes considered as a social network service, though in a broader sense, social network service usually means an individual-centered service whereas online community services are group-centered. Social networking sites allow users to share ideas, pictures, posts, activities, events, and interests with people in their network. The main types of social networking services are those that contain category places (such as former school year or classmates), means to connect with friends (usually with self-description pages), and a recommendation system linked to trust. Popular methods now combine many of these, with American-based services such as Facebook, Google+, Tumblr and Twitter widely used worldwide. SNS has been a popular field of research for years. Through interacting with others, many people find social network interesting and log in regularly. The explosive growth of social network sites accounts for not only the popularity of Web 2.0, but also the gradual change of online social behaviors through these SNS. The research looks at the social networking business model and analyzes its future, including forecasting the number of social networking members expected globally.