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The social web is a set of
social relation A social relation or also described as a social interaction or social experience is the fundamental unit of analysis within the social sciences, and describes any voluntary or involuntary interpersonal relationship between two or more individuals ...
s that link people through the
World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...
. The social web encompasses how
website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and W ...
s and
software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consist ...
are designed and developed in order to support and foster
social interaction A social relation or also described as a social interaction or social experience is the fundamental unit of analysis within the social sciences, and describes any voluntary or involuntary interpersonal relationship between two or more individuals ...
. These online social interactions form the basis of much online activity including
online shopping Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser or a mobile app. Consumers find a product of interest by visiting the website of t ...
,
education Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty ...
,
gaming Gaming may refer to: Games and sports The act of playing games, as in: * Legalized gambling, playing games of chance for money, often referred to in law as "gaming" * Playing a role-playing game, in which players assume fictional roles * Playing ...
and
social networking service A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, ac ...
s. The
social Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not. Etymology The word "social" derives from ...
aspect of Web 2.0 communication has been to facilitate interaction between people with similar tastes. These tastes vary depending on who the target audience is, and what they are looking for. For individuals working in the
public relation Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. Pu ...
department, the job is consistently changing and the impact is coming from the social web. The influence held by the social network is large and ever changing. As people's activities on the Web and communication increase, information about their social relationships become more available.
Social networking service A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, ac ...
s such as
Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...
enable people and organizations to contact each other with persistent human-friendly names. Today hundreds of millions of Internet users are using thousands of social websites to stay connected with their friends, discover new "friends", and to share user-created content, such as photos, videos, social bookmarks, and blogs, even through mobile platform support for
cell phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive telephone call, calls over a radio freq ...
s. By the second quarter in 2017,
Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...
reported 1.86 billion members, and, in 2008, MySpace occupied 100 million
users Ancient Egyptian roles * User (ancient Egyptian official), an ancient Egyptian nomarch (governor) of the Eighth Dynasty * Useramen, an ancient Egyptian vizier also called "User" Other uses * User (computing), a person (or software) using an ...
and
YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
had more than 100 million videos and 2.9 million user channels, and these numbers are consistently growing. The social Web is quickly reinventing itself, moving beyond simple web applications that connect individuals to live an entirely new way of life.


History

Like the telephone, the Internet was not created as a communication tool to interact socially, but evolved to become a part of everyday life. However, social interaction has been facilitated by the web for nearly the entire duration of its existence, as indicated by the continuing success of social software, which at its core centers around connecting individuals virtually with others whom they already have relationships with in the physical world.
Email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...
dates from the 1960s, and was one of the first social applications to connect multiple individuals through a network, enabling social interaction by allowing users to send messages to one or more people. This application, which some have argued may be the most successful social software ever, was actually used to help build the Internet. The web got its start as a large but simple
Bulletin Board System A bulletin board system (BBS), also called computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such ...
(BBS) that allowed users to exchange software, information, news, data, and other messages with one another., p. 60 Ward Christensen invented the first public BBS in the late 1970s, and another (named "
The WELL The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, normally shortened to The WELL, was launched in 1985. It is one of the oldest continuously operating virtual communities. By 1993 it had 7,000 members, a staff of 12, and gross annual income of $2 million. ...
") in the late 80's and early '90s arose as a popular online community. The
Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...
, a global discussion system similar to a BBS that enabled users to post public messages, was conceived in 1979; the system found tremendous popularity in the 1980s as individuals posted news and articles to categories called "
newsgroups A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are discussion groups and are not devoted to publishing news. Newsgroups are technically distinct ...
". By the late 1990s, personal web sites that allowed individuals to share information about their private lives with others were increasingly widespread. On this fertile period of the web's development, its creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote that: The term "social Web" was coined by
Howard Rheingold Howard Rheingold (born 1947) is an American critic, writer, and teacher, known for his specialties on the cultural, social and political implications of modern communication media such as the Internet, mobile telephony and virtual communities ( ...
for this network in 1996; Rheingold was quoted in an article for ''
Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...
'' on his website "Electric Minds", described as a "virtual community center" that listed online communities for users interested in socializing through the Web, saying that "The idea is that we will lead the transformation of the Web into a social Web". The social Web developed in three stages from the beginning of the '90s up to the present day, transforming from simple one-way communication web pages to a network of truly social applications. During the "one-way conversation" era of online applications in the mid '90s, most of the nearly 18,000 web pages in existence were "read only", or "static web sites" with information flowing exclusively from the person or organization that ran the site; although the web was used socially at this time, communication was difficult, achieved only through individuals reacting to each other's posts on one web page by responding to them on their own personal web page. In the mid '90s, Amazon and other pioneers made great progress in advancing online social interaction by discovering how to link databases to their web sites in order to store information as well as to display it; in concert with other innovations, this led to the rise of read-write web applications, allowing for a "two-way conversation" between users and the individual or organization running the site. As these web applications became more sophisticated, people became more comfortable using and interacting with them, bandwidth increased, and access to the Internet became more prevalent, causing designers to begin implementing new features that allowed users to communicate not only with a site's publishers, but with others who visited that site as well. Despite being a small step forward technologically, it was a huge step socially, enabling group interaction for the first time, and it has been claimed that this social exchange between many individuals is what separates a web application from a ''social Web'' application. The first
social networking service A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, ac ...
s, including Classmates.com (1995) and SixDegrees.com (1997), were introduced prior to social media sites. It has been argued that the transition towards social media sites began after the world's first online interactive diary community Open Diary was founded on December 19, 1998; currently still online after ten years, it has hosted over five million digital diaries. Open Diary successfully brought online diary writers together into one community as an early
social networking service A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, ac ...
, and it was during this time that the term " weblog" was coined (later to be shortened to the ubiquitous "blog" after one blogger jokingly turned weblog into the sentence "we blog"). Some claim that this marked the beginning of the current era of social media, with "social media" being a term that entered into both common usage and prominence as high-speed Internet became increasingly available, growing in popularity as a concept and leading to the rise of
social networking service A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, ac ...
s such as Myspace (2003) and Facebook (2004). It has been argued that this trend towards social media "can be seen as an evolution back to the Internet's roots, since it re-transforms the World Wide Web to what it was initially created for: a platform to facilitate information exchange between users."


Evolution

The social web is a way of life: many people visit
social networking service A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, ac ...
s at least once per day, and in 2008 the average amount of time per visit to MySpace hovered around twenty-six minutes (the length of a sitcom). Furthermore, the astoundingly rapid growth of the social Web since the '90s is not projected to slow down anytime soon: with less than 20% of the world's population using the Internet, the social Web is felt by some to still be in its infancy. The line between social networking and social media is becoming increasingly blurred as sites such as Facebook and Twitter further incorporate photo, video, and other functionalities typical of social media sites into users' public profiles, just as social media sites have been integrating features characteristic of
social networking service A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, ac ...
s into their own online frameworks. One notable change that has been brought about by the merging of social networking/media is the transformation of social web applications into egocentric software that put people at the center of applications. Although there had been discussion about a sense of community on the web prior to these innovations, modern social web software makes a wider set of social interactions available to the user, such as " friending" and "following" individuals, even sending them virtual gifts or kisses. Social Web applications are typically built using
object oriented programming Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of pr ...
, utilizing combinations of several programming languages, such as
Ruby A ruby is a pinkish red to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum ( aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called ...
, PHP, Python, ASP.NET and/or
Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...
. Often
API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...
s are utilized to tie non-social websites to social websites, one example being Campusfood.com.


Blogs and wikis

Both blogs and
Wikis A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...
are prime examples of collaboration through the Internet, a feature of the group interaction that characterizes the social Web. Blogs are used as BBS for the 21st century on which people can post discussions, whereas Wikis are constructed and edited by anyone who is granted access to them. Members of both are able to see the recent discussions and changes made, although for many blogs and Wikis such as
Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
this is true even for non-members. Blogs and Wikis allow users to share information and educate one another, and these social interaction are focused on content and meaning. Blogs and Wikis are used by both those writing them and those who reference them as resources. Blogs allow members to share ideas and other members to comment on those ideas, while Wikis facilitate group collaboration: both of these tools open a gateway of communication in which social interaction allows the web to develop. These sites are used by teachers and students alike to accomplish the goal of sharing education, and working in a community with other scholars enables the users to see different interpretations of similar subjects as well as to share resources that might not be available to them otherwise.


Mobile connectivity support

Most
social networking service A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, ac ...
s offer
mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on d ...
s and
internet phone Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...
connectivity. Popular social web sites such Facebook Mobile,
Orkut Orkut was a social networking service owned and operated by Google. The service was designed to help users meet new and old friends and maintain existing relationships. The website was named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkök ...
, Twitter, and YouTube have led the way for other sites to enable their users to post and share new content with others, update their statuses and receive their friends' updates and uploaded content via mobile platforms.The central aim for both sites offering these mobile services and for those who use them is for the user to maintain contact with their friends online at all times; it allows them to update their profiles and to communicate with each other even when they are away from a computer. It is predicted that this trend will continue in the future, not as other sites follow suit to offer similar services, but as they are extended to other mobile devices that social web users will carry with them in years to come. Social web mobile applications can also allow for
augmented reality Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory. AR can be de ...
gaming and experiences; examples of such include SCVGR and
Layar Layar was a Dutch company based in Amsterdam, founded in 2009 by Raimo van der Klein, Claire Boonstra and Maarten Lens-FitzGerald. They created a mobile browser app called Layar. The browser allowed users to find various items, using augmented r ...
.


Social features added to non-social sites

Web sites that are not built around social interaction nevertheless add features that enable discussion and collaboration out of an interest in expanding their user bases—a trend that is projected to continue in the coming years. As early as 1995 electronic retailer
Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...
had implemented such features, especially the customer review, to great success; Joshua Porter, author of ''Designing for the Social Web,'' writes: These customer reviews contribute valuable information that individuals seek out, and are written by users for free simply out of a desire to share their experiences with a product or service with others; the quality and value of each review is further determined by other users, who rate them based upon whether or not they found the feedback helpful, "weeding out the bad (by pushing them to the bottom
f the page F, or f, is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ef'' (pronounced ), and the plural is ''efs''. His ...
." Non-retailer, special interest websites have also implemented social web features to broaden their appeal: one example is Allrecipes.com, a community of 10 million cooks that share ideas and recipes with one another. In addition to exchanging recipes with others through the website, users are able to rate and post reviews of recipes they have tried, and to provide suggestions as to how to improve or alter them; according to the website, "The ratings/reviews...are a valuable resource to our community because they show how the members and their families feel about a recipe. Does the recipe get raves—or does it never get made again? Your opinion counts". This feedback is used to evaluate and classify recipes based upon how successfully they passed through the site's "editorial process" and to what extent they were approved by site members, potentially resulting in receiving "Kitchen approved" status that is comparable to Wikipedia's "good article" nomination process. The site has also augmented its services by including social features such as user blogs and connecting with other social networking/media sites like Facebook to expand its presence on the social Web. The recipes found on this website become part of the social web as other members rank them, comment and provide feedback as to why the recipe was good or bad, or to share ways in which they would change it. The integration of "social" features has also begun to extend into non-Web media forms including print and broadcast. Increasingly prevalent mobile devices have offered a platform for media companies to create hybridised media forms which draw upon the social web, such as the Fango mobile app offered by Australian partnership
Yahoo!7 Yahoo! Australia (formerly Yahoo7 between 2006 and 2018) is the Australian subsidiary of global internet company Yahoo! Originally a 50/50 joint venture between Yahoo! and Seven West Media, it has been a 100% subsidiary of Verizon Media since ...
which combines traditional TV programming with live online discussions and existing social networking channels.


Social art

Artists use the social Web to share their art, be it visual art on sites like
deviantART DeviantArt (historically stylized as deviantART) is an American online art community that features artwork, videography and photography, launched on August 7, 2000 by Angelo Sotira, Scott Jarkoff, and Matthew Stephens among others. DeviantArt, ...
, video art on
YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
, musical art on YouTube or
iTunes iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mul ...
, or
physical art Physical art, as contrasted with conceptual art, refers to art that entirely exists in physical reality, in space and time. Its ontology, ontological status is that it is a physical object. The art is concretely realized but may be abstract art, ...
, such as posting and selling crafted items on
Craigslist Craigslist (stylized as craigslist) is an American classified advertisements website with sections devoted to jobs, housing, for sale, items wanted, services, community service, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums. Craig Newmark began the ...
. Artists choose to post their art online so that they can gain critiques on their work, as well as just have the satisfaction of knowing others can experience and enjoy their work. With this social web generation, students spend more time using social tools like computers, video games, video cameras and cell phones. These tools allow the art to be shared easily, and aid in the discussion.


Collaborative efforts facilitated by the social web


Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing has become one of the ways in which the social Web can be used collaborative efforts, particularly in the last few years, with the dawn of the semantic web and Web 2.0. Modern web applications have the capabilities for crowdsourcing techniques, and consequently the term is now used exclusively for web-based activity. Examples include sites such as SurveyMonkey.com and SurveyU.com; for example, SurveyMonkey enables users to administer surveys to a list of contacts they manage, then collect and analyze response data using basic tools provided on the website itself and finally export these results once they are finished. Crowdsourcing is used by researchers in order to emulate a traditional
focus group A focus group is a group interview involving a small number of demographically similar people or participants who have other common traits/experiences. Their reactions to specific researcher/evaluator-posed questions are studied. Focus groups are ...
, but in a less expensive and less intimate atmosphere. Due to the nature of the social Web, people feel more open to express what their thoughts are on the topic of discussion without feeling as though they will be as heavy scrutinized by the rest of the group when compared to a traditional setting. The Internet serves as a screen, helping to evoke the purest feedback from the participants in the group, as it removes much of a
mob mentality Herd mentality, mob mentality or pack mentality describes how people can be influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviors on a largely emotional, rather than rational, basis. When individuals are affected by mob mentality, they may make dif ...
. Facebook has also been a mode in which crowdsourcing can occur, as users typically ask a question in their status message hoping those that see it on his or her news feed will answer the question, or users may opt to use the poll option now available to obtain information from those within their friends network.


Community-based software projects

Through the use of the social Web, many software developers opt to participate in community-based
open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...
projects, as well as hacking projects for
proprietary software Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and int ...
,
kernel (computing) Kernel may refer to: Computing * Kernel (operating system), the central component of most operating systems * Kernel (image processing), a matrix used for image convolution * Compute kernel, in GPGPU programming * Kernel method, in machine learnin ...
modifications, and
freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the f ...
ports of games and software.
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
iterations are perfect examples of how effective and efficient this sort of collaboration can be. Google's Android operating system is another example, as many coders work on modifying existing hardware kernels and ROMs to create customized forms of a released Android version. These collaborative efforts for Android take place typically through
xda-developers XDA Developers (also known simply as XDA; often stylized as xda-developers) is a mobile software development community launched on 20 December 2002. Although discussion primarily revolves around Android, members also talk about many other opera ...
and androidforums.com.


Mobile application development

Most of the modern mobile applications, and indeed even browser applications, come from released
software development kits A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific to ...
to developers. The developers create their applications and share them with users via "app markets". Users can comment on their experiences with the applications, allowing all users to view the comments of others, and thus have a greater understanding of what is to be expected from the application. Typically there is also a rating a system in addition to comments. Mobile social Web applications are built using various
API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...
s. These APIs allow for the interaction and interconnection of data on one social database, be it Facebook, Twitter, or
Google Account A Google Account is a user account that is required for access, authentication and authorization to certain online Google services. It is also often used as single sign on for third party services. Usage A Google Account is required for Gmail, ...
, thus creating a literal web of data connections. These applications then add to the user experience specific to the application itself. Examples include
TweetDeck TweetDeck is a social media dashboard application for management of Twitter accounts. Originally an independent app, TweetDeck was subsequently acquired by Twitter Inc. and integrated into Twitter's interface. It has long ranked as one of the most ...
and
Blogger A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
.


From the social web to real life

The way in which individuals share intimate details, and perform tasks such as dating, shopping, and applying for jobs is very different from in previous generations. Now, one's preferences, opinions, and activities are routinely shared with a group of friends with whom they may or may not ever meet were it not for the social web. Many social websites use online social interaction to create a bridge to real life interaction. Relationships are formed between individuals via the internet and then become more personal through other forms of communication. An example of this type of interaction is found on
eBay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became a ...
: with more than 94 million active users globally, eBay is the world's largest online marketplace, where anyone can buy and sell practically anything. This website allows individuals to sell items and other to bid on these items. At the end of the auction, the buyer pays the seller; the buyer then sends the purchased product to the winner of the auction. The relationship begins on the internet, but extends into real life interaction. Ways in eBay facilitates this interaction include
Skype Skype () is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, deb ...
, a leading online communications service that enables people to communicate through voice or video online for free. eBay Inc. acquired Skype in 2005 and significantly expanded its customer base to more than 480 million registered users in nearly every country on earth. The end result of all eBay transactions is a seller providing the buyer with a product, most commonly via mail: web interaction ending in a real world exchange. The relationship that is formed with eBay users is similar to the users of
Craigslist Craigslist (stylized as craigslist) is an American classified advertisements website with sections devoted to jobs, housing, for sale, items wanted, services, community service, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums. Craig Newmark began the ...
. Users place items that they want to sell on the website, and other users that are looking to purchase these items contact the seller. Craigslist is used to bring together individuals and organizations and connect them to the resources, tools, technology and ideas they need to effectively engage in
community building Community building is a field of practices directed toward the creation or enhancement of community among individuals within a regional area (such as a neighborhood) or with a common need or interest. It is often encompassed under the fields of c ...
and see the impact of their actions. This is done via email or over the telephone. The buyer and the seller form a meeting in which goods are exchanged for money. Without this type of website, the buyer would not know that the product was available by the seller. This type of website allows members of a physical community to network with the other members of their community to exchange goods and services. The transaction from web to real life is seen on a macro scale most recently on
dating website Online dating, also known as Internet dating, Virtual dating, or Mobile app dating, is a relatively recent method used by people with a goal of searching for and interacting with potential romantic or sexual partners, via the internet. An onlin ...
s, which are used to search and match other users. These websites allow members with a common interest, to find others with this same interest. Academics who have studied the industry believe that it and other forms of
electronic communication Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that ...
such as e-mail and social networks are starting to have a significant effect on the ways in which people find love. Users are able to interact with one another and find if they have common interests. Many sites have been developed that target many different
interest group Advocacy groups, also known as interest groups, special interest groups, lobbying groups or pressure groups use various forms of advocacy in order to influence public opinion and ultimately policy. They play an important role in the developm ...
s, and relationships form and develop using the internet. If the users decide that they share a mutual bond, they are able to interact via the telephone, and eventually in person. The relationship begins on the internet, but can lead to real life dating and eventually even marriage.


See also

* Sociology of the Internet *
Digital sociology The sociology of the Internet involves the application of sociological theory and method to the Internet as a source of information and communication. The overlapping field of digital sociology focuses on understanding the use of digital media a ...
*
Digital anthropology Digital anthropology is the anthropological study of the relationship between humans and digital-era technology. The field is new, and thus has a variety of names with a variety of emphases. These include techno-anthropology, digital ethnograp ...
* Tribe (internet) * Web science


References


Further reading

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Design Features for the Social Web: The Architecture of Deme
(with Mike D. Mintz), 8th International Workshop on Web-Oriented Software Technologies (IWWOST 2009), Donostia-San Sebastián, June 23, 2009
The Social Web: Creating An Open Social Network with XDI
Archive.org The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...


External links


Social Web Incubator Group at the W3C


{{DEFAULTSORT:Social Web Social networks Cultural globalization Web 2.0 neologisms