Find your social circle online

Just as everyone seems to have heard of email, Ebay and Google, Youtube, Myspace and Friends Reunited have become household names.

Social networking is in the news a lot these days – sometimes for the wrong reasons. But it’s actually got a lot to offer everyone, not just teenagers.

We’re going to show you how to make use of what are called social networking websites to make new friends, share information and get access to a whole new world of fun.

We will work through the sign-up procedure and explore some features at a site called Tribe shortly, but let’s first explain what social networking is.

Social networking has an enormous amount to offer all of us – it’s a great way to share information and resources with others to the mutual benefit of all.

Hundreds of millions of people use social networking sites every day to pursue hobbies, make new friends, organise their social lives and develop their businesses, and far from being places where kids hang out wasting time, social networking sites are hives of activity where people of all ages and backgrounds promote their common interests.

The roots of social networking
Like everything else in the world of computing and communications, the pace at which social networking sites have developed is breakneck. In the 12 years since they first appeared, they have grown so quickly that the biggest now has more than 175 million members. And it’s not only the numbers that have changed – so have the sites themselves.

The first social networking site was started in America in 1995. Classmates.com was conceived as a way for people to get in touch with school friends they had lost contact with. It was, and still is, free to post personal information on the site and to search for old friends, but to actually make contact with anybody involves paying a subscription fee. A similar model is used by Friends Reunited, a UK-based site that was officially launched in 2000 and now has affiliations worldwide.

Branching out
Classmates.com and Friends Reunited are not typical social networking sites. For one thing, you still have to pay to use them at a time when most other sites are free, but the big difference is that they don’t provide much scope for self-expression.

Yes, you can post a picture of yourself and write a few lines about what you’ve done since you left school, but on social networking sites such as Friendster and Myspace, you’re given free reign to design a personal profile including music, photos, graphics and animations, along with as much text about yourself as you care to write.

Social networking enables you to build circles of friends by combining those you meet online with others already known to you. Members of a circle visit each other’s pages and make comments on them, and an internal messaging system enables open communication without having to divulge a personal email address.

For school kids it’s rather different. Sites such as Bebo are not so much a way of making new friends as places where kids can meet their real-life mates privately, in a virtual space that is even safer from parental invasion than a locked bedroom. If you are a parent and have concerns about your children’s use of such websites, read our free guide.

They can see which of their friends are online and communicate with them using online chat, or send messages to everybody in a certain circle or group through bulk messaging.