Social Networking-Sites-What are they?

Social networking is where people interact both personally, professionally, advertise their goods and services to one another.  People may belong to a social network service because they share a common interest or hobby, and give each other advice or thoughts.  One of the first social networking sites that I remeber joining was Classmates.com in 1995, to keep in touch with my old high school friends.  Many of the main social naetworking sites are Facebook, Bebo, Twitter, MySpace, and LinkedIn that are used intercontinental (http://en.wikepedia.org/wiki/social_network_service).  LinkedIn is used for a lot of business social-networking sites to attract potential customers to get feedback on a product, and for individuals and organizations to communicate about employment oppurtunities.
Twitter uses a slang word called 'Tweets" that can reach millions of people and for the unemployed to help reach organization recruiters(http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/251twitter-could-become-a-recruiters-best-friend?pa...).  In the months of december, 2009 and January 2010 Twitter has had almost 400,000 jobs posted; and this has become a vast tool for the unemployed to find another job besides other internet sites like Monster.com and carrer.job.com (bits-nytimes). 
William Fischer who is a coowner of Workdigital company made a fantastic software tool called 'TwitJobSearch" which goes through Twitter's mainframes looking for help-wanted postings (bits-nytimes).  "TwitjobSearch" is able to detect downturns in a particular job industry and will not post when requested by an individual who types that industry in the search engine (bits-nytimes).  The next new software that 'WorkDigital' has created for organizations looking for applicants is "JobDeck", and this software collects Tweets from Twitter and updates job postings on LinkedIn (bit-nytimes).  The organizations also advertise their products and services in addition to placing job listings and pay a hefty sum in some cases for their advertisements when people use search engines on these social-networking sites (bits-nytimes).

Ning:

Ning is another social-networking site that was started in 2007 and it is free.  Ning is differnt than facebook or MySpace because it is somewhat like "Creative Commons" that allows people to build their sites on "social-networking platforms based around their passions and pastimes" (http://cnn.site.printhis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=Ning%3A+Thefutureof...).  The way it's similiar to "Creative Commons" is that people can share their musical talents and get a limited copyright, too.  The idea for creating Ning was websites like Craigslist and eBay, because they connected people to business (Cnn-the futere of...).  One of  the many top sites on Ning is 'this is a hiphop TMz and the other popular site is the 'Pickens' Plan" that is interested in environmental energy-alternatives like solar and wind energy (Cnn-the futureof...).  What is the difference with Ning from Facebook and Twitter is that these two social-networking sites connect an individual to another person that they are already acquainted with, or real-time news events on Twitter.  Whereas Ning is allowing people to meet new people with similiar interests (Cnn-the future of...). 

News Organizations:

Facebook and google and Twitter have been in competition for news media outlets to use their sites in order to grow their audiences even further (http://www.poynter.orgcolumn.asp/?=31&aid=168485&view=print).  Facebook in August of 2004 decided to face its competitors with the news-media outlets by "acquiring FriendFeed", real-time search engines, and allow people to place ads on their Facebook networking sites (http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=31&aid=168485&view=print).  Since this article was written Facebook has made software that enables the user to have ecommerce applications to compete with PayPal and this allows people to buy right from the Facebook page without having to leave and go to PayPal (Poynter).  The news media fan pages are the NewYork Times, CNN, and other smaller newspaper outlets online (Poynter).  Facebook is still behind the times by 7 years compare to where Google is today; but without Facebook or a Google site if you aren't there than the individual may miss a huge audience and exposure to other social-networkers' (Poynter).

BBC News Organization:

According to BBC service director Peter Horrocks states that social networking sites is a very efficient way of getting journalism across the internet in just seconds and reaches a much wider audience.  He also atates that it has helped the BBC to cover news from isolated, hostile, or treacherous parts of the world by using mobile phones and gives real-time news coverage of events like Iran (www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/feb/10/peter-horrocks-social-media/print).  Horrocks also states that early on in the movement of social-netorking sites was how to get the journalistic qualities on the internet in the same principles of live reporting on the television and now the BBC sees that it shouldn't be that much harder to report on the internet (guardian).

Marketing on Social-Networking Sites:

Facebook has 300 million users and is a great niche for the Long Tail of e-commerce to sell a lot of different products to purchase but couldn't readily find it (www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/business/smallbusiness/12guide.html?_r=3&pagewan...).  Starbucks coffee franchise utilizes Facebook to reach an audience, Ticketmaster, and amazon.com, too; and thus this can enable another link to their websites (CNN).  Not only is Facebook being used for social-networking peer-to-peer or business to peer; but, an introduction to the arts, and allowing scientists to discuss research and findings from data more readily (CNN).