Recap on Lecture Notes: the Definition of Social Networking
"- The process of building online communities, often accomplished both through 'groups' and 'friends lists' that allow greater interaction on websites.
- Is a process of building relationship over the web."
When I was reading the definition above, I categorized email and instant messenger as social networking very naturally, since I think there are groups and lists for email and IM, and we could build relationship there. It really surprised me when I realized that many people are against this view. But there are classmates agree with me as well. Guan Hao also think email is a kind of social networking and writes a blog on it.
What is Social Networking Exactly?
The definition on our notes is a little bit sketchy and ambiguous. To clarify it, I follow the link on lecture notes and find more detail about social networking. According to Daniel Nation's article, social networking is:"Based on a certain structure that allow people to both express their individuality and meet people with similar interests. This structure includes having profiles, friends, blog posts, widgets..."If we follow this specification on the architecture of social networking, perhaps we still have disagreements on whether email is social networking or not. How about IM? As there are too many different IMs, let's narrow it down and focus on Tencent QQ, which is an IM of most widely used in mainland China.
Is QQ a Kind of Social Networking?
Well, let's check the following facts first:
1. Users have their profiles and friends.
2. In the early version, there are chatting rooms built in OICQ, they are grouped into different categories, such as teenagers' room, which enables people could meet people with similar interests. In fact, many beautiful stories about online love affairs began here at that time.
2. In the early version, there are chatting rooms built in OICQ, they are grouped into different categories, such as teenagers' room, which enables people could meet people with similar interests. In fact, many beautiful stories about online love affairs began here at that time.
3. Group chatting was QQ's another important function for social networking. Different from chatting room (whose categories and names are given by the Tencent administrators), groups builders and administrators are users. Each group's members may share some attribution or have same interest, say, CUHK MSc IE students 2012 group, and I met some new friends there.
4. Bound tightly with QQ, Qzone is introduced in 2005. Users could write blogs there, and any latest updates on Qzone will be displayed on their profiles of QQ. Friends' update also could be pushed to users.
5. Recently, QQ 2012 add another function called "Circle" (Does it sound familiar?).
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QQ Circle: Does it look like another "fake clone"
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As the features match all the requirements of social networking, I suppose there is no reason to deny QQ is a social networking platform.
References:
http://webtrends.about.com/od/socialnetworking/a/social-network.htm
http://baike.baidu.com/view/1535.htm
(All pictures are from Internet.)
