Conventional wisdom says that social networks were born online with MySpace. It’s not true. The first social network was ClassMates.com. Created by Randy Conrads in 1995, the Classmates.com website helps users find, connect and keep in touch with friends from throughout their lives – including work, school, college, etc. Later the inevitable happens and last ten years has seen a grow” a “flourishing” in Social Networks like Friendster, Facebook, etc. Below, cronological list of other social networks.
What About Social Networking Sites?
A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, conflict, trade, web links, sexual relations, disease transmission (epidemiology), or airline routes. The resulting structures are often very complex. Source: Wikipedia.org
I see an unbundling of the services that make up social networks. While sites such as facebook or frienster, user can create a profile, add friends, and share similar interests, digg, de.li.cio.us or my 76newsalways.com are only user-submitted sites. Once you submit content, other people read.
In order to know the key point of differentiation between these two types of social networking, first we need to divide those sites under two different category: Note: That is a my teory, so if you are disagree I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
Centralized And Decentralized: What Do You Think?
For instance, Digg or Delicious are an example of a centralized social networking. Every time you submit a story, a feature allows users to vote search results up or down using a voting system. In this cas users are active partecipants and their actions influence the whole community.
That is because all members of Digg use the principal page of the different categories to stay updated with the hot stories around the website.
Twitter has become my favorite site and can be considered as a decentralized social network. That is because the system allows you to create your own micro communities and your actions inside those communities will not affect other members outside of them. You can decide who you follow, and other people in turn will decide if they want to follow you back or not.
Conclusion
By now you should know what I want to say when I talk about centralized and decentralized social networks. Social networking give you a chance to promote your website, yourself, express your opinions and much more.
I personally use each of these two type social networking. I think that networking is part and parcel of the independent publishers day-to-day work. There are few people these days that do not have a network broader than that of a generation or two ago. What do you think? people should avoid to promoting itself on social networking like Facebook, or their own content on sites like digg?
I like the history you’ve got going there. Haven’t seen that list in awhile.
I think people should keep their pitches focussed. Social media is more about giving back to the communities over expecting results.
For more on centralized vs decentralized social networks, check out http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/05/20/what-are-the-unspoken-rules-of-social-networks/
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Nicola,
Good article. Why not promote your own work. I personally thing that twitter is the great way to promote your blog if you have a large number of people following you.
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