Social networking sites provide a stage to meet people to other people of the same interests or needs. On social network sites you can get friendship, community, sense of belonging; help with a problem or information you want; meet the people who like the same thing you like, listen same music you listen to, have same needs you have. It is a place you can share your photos, videos, audios, etc.

Types of Social Networking Sites

We can break down online communities in many categories like:

Informational

This kind of community consists of people who seek answers of their day to day problems. Informational community sites usually contains a lot of ‘how to’ style information and advices, guides, etc written by members as well as professionals; For instance EHow, Do-It-Yourself, etc.

Professional

This kind of social network helps you to uplift in your career or create a space in your industry. You can put your personal or business profile and let other to see and contact you; For instance linked In, Canon Professional Photographer Community, etc.

Educational

This is very popular and highly useful network. Students of schools or colleges form it where they collaborate with each other on many topics such as for academic projects, to conduct research, etc. They participate in class room forums and interact with teachers or professors via blogs and forums. The most popular sites are:

• The Student Room - A UK-based student community

• The Math Forum - A large educational network for math students

• ePALS School Blog - Connects school students from around the world to promote world peace

• eLearners - A community for online degree students

Hobbies

This is the most popular social network type. People like to share their hobbies with others who have same hobbies. They like to share their information regarding to their hobbies, their inventions, their collections, etc. The example sites are GardenWeb, Sports Pundit, Automotive Forums, etc.

Academic

Mostly academic researchers form this kind of networks to share their research with other researchers. ARPANET is one of the examples of such collaborative scientific communities. Another example is Thomson Reuters Scientific Research and OVID Health Research.

News

These are large content websites whose members are allowed to publish recent news, stories, commentary, etc. When these types of sites are well monitored they proved the excellent collection of good content otherwise they become the storage of promotional materials only. Their examples are Associated Content, Helium and Suite 101.

Benefits of Social Networking Sites

Social media and networking sites give some obvious benefits to the small and medium business like:

Branding

Most of the social networking sites offer creation of profile page which has unique URL. If you carefully insert your brand name in the URL of that profile you will be able to propagate your brand and rank ahead in the pages of search results.

Link Building

Majority of social networking sites are allow linking your site pages thus, they offer back linking free. You can include specific anchor text related phrases and point them to your site pages.

Traffic

Audience at social networking sites are trust you well and can consume your promotional content therefore, they become quality traffic for you. Many social sites have capacity to divert traffic at your site and it is depend on your niche and your choice of the site but one thing is sure that you should have creative juice to flow there.

Live Interaction

On social sites you are not just talking but you interact with the real people. You will receive their feedbacks, their point of view and give them your views, if necessary you will correct them, you can guide them, inform them so they will know you personally and trust you more even will feel comfortable doing business with you.

Networking

Many social sites offer creation of groups so you can join the group of like minded people and spread your network that helps you to involve large numbers of people in your business.

ASPDOTNET for Social Networking Sites

ASPDOTNET 2.0 offers features that every ASPDOTNET developer will find useful in creation of social network sites, including:

• Multiple project types

• A wide variety of web controls

• Enhanced code-behind model

• Project folders to help organize files

• Master pages and themes

• Site administration tools

• Site navigation features

• Enhanced data access features

• Membership and personalization

• Portal architecture including web parts

The advent of social networking sites like MySpace, which is written in ASPDOTNET 2.0.