Network

A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as and instant messaging services.

Social networking has encouraged new ways to communicate and share information. Social networking websites are being used regularly by millions of people.

Social networks have for several years been the toast of new media. Their principal strength has been an ability to gather tens of millions of unique users. Their main shortcoming, however, has been the inability of several social networks to monetize their volumes of signed-up users.
While it could be said that email and websites have most of the essential elements of social network services, the idea of proprietary encapsulated services has gained popular uptake recently.