tony7531's Journal: In-Dept Social Networking

A social network is a social structure made of nodes, which are generally individuals, that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, financial exchange, interests, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.

Nodes are the individual actors within the networks, and ties are the relationships between the actors.

In its simplest form, a social network is a map of all of the relevant ties between the nodes being studied. There can be many kinds of ties between the nodes. Research in a number of academic fields has shown that social networks operate on many levels, from families up to the level of nations.

The shape of a social network helps determine a network's usefulness to its individuals. Smaller, tighter networks can be less useful to their members than networks with lots of weak ties to individuals outside the main network. More open networks, with many weak ties and social connections, are more likely to introduce new ideas and opportunities to their members than closed networks with many redundant ties. In other words, a group of friends who only do things with each other already share the same knowledge and opportunities. A group of individuals with connections to other social worlds is likely to have access to a wider range of information. It is better for individual success to have connections to a variety of networks rather than many connections within a single network. Similarly, individuals can exercise influence or act as brokers within their social networks by bridging two networks that are not directly linked.

Some researchers have suggested that human social networks may have a genetic basis. Using a sample of twins from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, they found that the number of times a person is named as a friend, the probability that two friends are friends with one another, the number of paths in the network that pass through a given person are all significantly heritable. Existing models of network formation cannot account for this intrinsic node variation, so the researchers propose an alternative "Attract and Introduce" model that can explain heritability and many other features of human social networks.

Story credited by PuppyJuice.com which has used and still uses social networking with a very successful outcome.