Monday, August 6, 2007

Internet Social Networks

Since the appearance of the web we've been using mail and web mail as means of communication. With the upcoming web 2.0 new means of communications have been created. Blogs, wikis and social networks are new buzzwords in the information society.
We are facing a new revolution in the information society which break some boundaries. According to sociologists, persons have a limit for social relationships. Dumbar's number (150) its the maximum number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships.
The appearance of Internet social networks change this proposal and can make people get involve with an infinitive numbers of people and keep stable relationships. Its like an upgrade of the hard disk which you can use to save information about your relations and load it when you need it.
For the net generation this mean is part of their lives and is approaching the use electronic mail. Hi5, facebook, myspace, wayn and lately linkedin are examples of social networks leading the market (as far as I know). The main feature of these networks are that are focus on some field of interest and try to reach a special niche. Hi5 and myspace are based on friendship (I had contact people I have not seen in 20 years) and are very popular among youngsters, wayn is based on traveling, quit interesting special for people who travel a lot, Linkedin is a network of pros and facebook is mix of all of them.