Do you really think kthat Social Networks are useful?

With the appearance of Web2.0, we hear more and more about “social networking”. What it is exactly and what is its potential?

The most famous exemples of social networks are MySpace, Friendster or Classmates (the first one in Europe). The concept of social network was created by J. A. Barnes in 1954 with its book Class and Committees in a Norwegian Island Parish (if you want to know more about his work, check this summary) and refers to a “social structure made of nodes which are generally individuals or organizations. It indicates the ways in which they are connected through various social familiarities ranging from casual acquaintance to close familial bonds” (definition from Wikipedia).

It is an old concept but it has been updated with the web insofar as it allows the existence of “virtual communities” - according to Howard Rheingold’s concept. Indeed Internet allows people to communicate and creates social bonds without seeing each other.

Howard Rheingold.

He said everything about virtual communities ten years before everybody knew what it was.

For now it seems that most of social networks are not successful in matter of the qualitu of the bonds created by people. How many MySpace profiles with more than 1000 friends can be seen? Do they actually keep in touch with all of them, or at least a tenth?



Nevertheless online Social Networks are potentially major if they are used properly. Indeed they can allow people who share the same interest to get in touch with one another. Moreover a social network can be the perfect area to create of community of practice that stimulate each other so as to generate collective intelligence.