A social network service, such as Facebook or MySpace focuses on building online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.
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Most social network services are web-based and provide a collection of various ways for users to interact, such as email, notice boards, discussion groups, video sharing, voice chat and so on. In addition to these communication tools, each user can maintain a profile, containing information such as interests, photos, contact details and so on. This is one facet that sets social networks apart from other online communities. The main types of social networking services are those which contain directories of some categories (such as former classmates) and ways to connect with friends (usually with self-description pages). Popular networking sites now combine many of these. |
Social networking sites have a controversial place in schools. Access is often blocked due to security issues and the heavy socializing they can incur is deemed inappropriate on school premises.
However, it could be argued that social networking sites simply offer lots of different ways to communicate, as well as some of the Web 2.0 technologies, such as blogs that can all be used to educational ends. At university level they are often used to recruit expertise for group tasks, and have the same capacity for high school students, perhaps within a gated community.