Online Social Networking – Catering To Different Individuals Needs

Social interaction insinuated a change of approach in the year of 1995, when the internet world has meddled with the people’s lives by introducing Classmates.com, a website that promotes cyber relationship by creating a string of friends in one network. Since then, because of the genuine purpose and its success it caused many others to follow its path, creating their own version but basically with the same format and aim.

Several others have followed but it was not until the year of 2001 wherein those websites conducted an additional flavor to the concept by brewing the idea of “circle of friends”, or literally network of friends. Online social networking websites of this kind started to flourish when the advent of Friendster.com appeared in 2002. The creation of this virtual community brought a new meaning to online social networking because of the phenomenal success it has brought to the lives of the many.

Friendster, among with the earlier websites, has inspired many companies to follow and also have created their own virtual community websites. Hence, a number of over 200 websites of the same essence are now in the internet world and likewise fast becoming a rapid hit amongst people, regardless of age and race.

In 2003, a social networking website called MySpace.com was also getting much attention from all around the world. After this, another social network website called orkut, was produced by the Google. And Facebook in 2004 which has gone on to be the biggest and most popular social site to date.

In these virtual communities, the founders of those websites started the connection by sending out invitations to their personal list of friends to join them in the site. When these people have entered the site by becoming a link to the founders, they would also do the same by adding their own set of friends. These other people would repeat the same process until the networking website has grown a multitude of links and members of the social network site.

These members were asked to create their own identification by setting up their own account with profiles as their entry into the website. They are also offered with features such as address books and updating them at anytime, viewable profiles, putting up your best picture (to other websites such as Friendster you can set up an album or several dozens of your pictures), and the ability to get another link/s through the tool, introduction services.

Many of the online social networking websites were a hit amongst young people. This is because they offer the approach of blended networking capability which combined online elements toward offline elements, meaning members have the choice to meet face-to-face. Others were catered primarily to specific crowds such as college community, for those who are focused on a specific niche like sports, music, party, animals, and a lot more.

Another reason why online websites is a hit to teenagers and younger peope is that most of them are offered for free. Anyone can join the website without too much restriction and without even shelling out a cent but with too large a benefit and features.