Few ingredients of something being “Social” on the top of my head are,
- which gives the glimpse of a family. a family could be of friends, blood relatives, colleagues, partners, etc.. The common ingredient here is that they already know or want to know each other.
- something personal
- something connected between two persons
- something you care about
- from which you can associate yourself
- from which you can interact or meet people having similar interests, professions, likes, dislikes
- mutual interests, needs, desires, wishes, habits
- the connection between the two can be of individual or group level
You may want to add more but thats up to you =]
few social networks on the web that you already know,
- facebook – a unviersal social network (no focus & for everyone)
- plurk – a social journal (shares your ToDos in a timeline – good concept)
- PartnerUp – for entrepreneurs
- Ryze – for business
- Ning – if you want to create ur own social network
- twitter – status updates, rss, micro-blog
- LinkedIn – for professionals
- Livemocha – for language leaners
- BirdPost – for bird lovers
There is a great sense of attachment for us if we are using any of these networks. In the last 5 years dozens of new and interesting concepts of social networks appeared. Their population is still on the rise but can you see ahead in 10 years. Will they still be same ? Will Facebook be the same facebook after 10 years. Now, there are nearly 175 of such social networks. This number will keep on increasing for some years but after that, only those will survive which have no immediate competitor and target specific niche. MySapce is dying (new focus: entertainment), orkut is dying (only alive in brazil, new focus: nothing), ning is dying only because people have good alternative of facebook. The way to look forward for them in order to survive is focusing the peoples’ needs.
What about these interesting soial networks below? I don’t know if they already exist – but tell me if they are !
- social network for bald people …errr [something exist at ning network related to it but not that convincing ]
- social network for unemployed people
- social network for divorced
- social network for pizza lovers
- social network for philanthropists (added 2 Nov)
- social network for …..err [more to come soon, check back later]
The thing is – social network is kind of a value system, it gives value to your life and aims at improving it by mutual coordination, discussion, problem sharing and more. But in your opinion what makes the social network social? Please answerthe Which, How, & Why of Social Networks. Are they any good ? For some I know they are too good. But how do you feel about it.
[NOTE: feel comfortable in answering as you will fill it completely anonymously. It will not ask any personal information, but if you want to mention your info then do it in comments 
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