Social networking has quickly become the buzz word of the year, but what exactly is it? A social network is a social structure, or map, made up of individuals (called “nodes”) that are connected by one ore more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, financial exchange, relationships or beliefs, knowledge or prestige. The most popular social network currently is Facebook.

Facebook
Facebook is the largest and fastest growing social network on the web with over 200 million users. It is also the most visited social network, with nearly 1.2 billion visits in January of 2009 alone. Facebook allows you to:

• Create a profile for your brand to allows postings of content, attraction of fans and interaction among your audience
• Create a group to allow certain controls over members’ participation
• Post content that includes company & product information, photos, videos, testimonials, event and promotional postings, members’ photos and information and blog postings following relevant topics.

Facebook also allows its users to create custom applications for use on their business and profile pages.

LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a business-orientated social networking site that is mainly used for professional networking. The purpose of this site is to allow registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people they know and trust in business. Not only does the site allow users to connect professionally and build relationships with other users, it allows users to research companies at which they may be interested in working.