Social Web

The social web is a set of social relations that link people through the World Wide Web. The Social web encompasses how websites and software are designed and developed in order to support and foster social interaction. These online social interactions form the basis of much online activity including online shopping, education, gaming and social networking websites. The social aspect of Web 2.0 communication has been to facilitate interaction between people with similar tastes. These tastes vary depending on who the target audience is, and what they are looking for. For individuals working in the public relation department, the job is consistently changing and the impact is coming from the social web. The influence, held by the social network is large and ever changing.

As people's activities on the Web and communication increase, information about their social relationships become more available. Social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, as well as the future Dataweb enable people and organizations to contact each other with persistent human-friendly names. Today hundreds of millions of Internet users are using thousands of social websites to stay connected with their friends, discover new ‘‘friends,’’and to share user-created content, such as photos, videos, social bookmarks, and blogs, even through mobile platform support for cell phones. By the end quarter in 2008, Facebook reported 67 million members, MySpace occupied 100 million users, and YouTube had more than 100 million videos and 2.9 million user channels, and these numbers are consistently growing. The social Web is quickly reinventing itself, moving beyond simple web applications that connect individuals to become an entirely new way of life.