Social networks are online communities that are built through person to personal referrals. Social networks consist of a way to connect to friends, relatives, and new people allowing a level of interaction that had never been seen before. The largest social network, which happens to be Facebook, was established in 2004 and was not the first one of its kind [1]. Even though it wasn't the first social networking site, it turned out to be the most successful for many reasons. While the first social network merely allowed users to create an online network with their friends and post a few pictures, Facebook introduced many new features and revolutionized the meaning of the word "social network". Facebook allows users to share pictures, video, audio, post notes, status updates, play games with other friends, share news, connect to other websites using their Facebook accounts, and the list goes on and on. Facebook just allowed people to do so many things that were never possible on any other website. The reasons why social networks have been so successful are very simple: 1. Ease of use 2. Fun. It is a simple task to sign up for and set up a new Facebook account. Furthermore, users are inclined to do so because they will then be able to interact with people they know (and don't know) by engaging in various activities. Despite the recent privacy and user issues, Facebook continues to grow and has reached a user base of more than 500 million users [2].
[2] http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
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