Social Web - The Evolving Social Web

The Evolving Social Web

The social Web is quickly becoming a way of life: many people visit social networking sites at least once per day, and in 2008 the average amount of time per visit to MySpace hovered around twenty-six minutes (the length of a sitcom). Furthermore, the astoundingly rapid growth of the social Web since the '90s is not projected to slow down anytime soon: with less than 20% of the world's population using the Internet, the social Web is felt by some to still be in its infancy. The line between social networking and social media is becoming increasingly blurred as sites such as Facebook and Twitter further incorporate photo, video, and other functionalities typical of social media sites into users' public profiles, just as social media sites have been integrating features characteristic of social networking sites into their own online frameworks. One notable change that has been brought about by the merging of social networking/media is the transformation of social web applications into egocentric software that put people at the center of applications.. Although there had been discussion about a sense of community on the web prior to these innovations, modern social web software makes a wider set of social interactions available to the user, such as "friending" and "following" individuals, even sending them virtual gifts or kisses. Social Web applications are typically built using object oriented programming, utilizing combinations of several programming languages, such as Ruby, PHP, Python, and/or Java. Often APIs are utilized to tie non-social websites to social websites, one example being Campusfood.com.