The social networking phenomena did not exist four years ago. The explosive growth of the phenomena has surprised many people. Words like revolution and quantum are used to communicate its growth and effect. In four years time it has grown to size where the number of those participating is in the millions across the globe. In many ways, the origin begins with the convergence of several events.

The social interacting that began with instant messaging (IM) has evolved. With IM, the user defines who is in their network. People would invite others to be “in their network”. The construction of the network gave them control over who they interacted with. In the initial marketing of such ideas, it was presented as a safety feature. Their network is the collection of persons that they have elected to receive messages from. Users sent invitations to other users to become part of their network. If the receiving user accepts the invitation, they have reciprocal interactions through the IM. In a short period of time the IM users found ways to evolve their networks. They competed to see who had the larger networks. These networks were used to set up social meetings with their friends.

IM differs from e-mail in that it occurs in ‘real-time’ just as ‘text messaging’ on cell phones. The two individuals interact with each other in the form of an ongoing conversation typed out on their keypads. Over time, the IM system improved to where pictures were added and other ways were available to customize ones’ on screen appearance. Among these other ways was the use of avatars and animated avatars.

Avatars are the cartoon-like animated representations that users posted of themselves. A related innovation used in social networking was the use of “smileys”. These consist of animated smiling faces used to convey various messages. The smileys evolved from ‘emoticons’. The emoticons involved the use of letters and numbers on the keyboard to express emotions (e.g. :) , :( ). With the advent of emotions, messages became more than flat two-dimensional means of communications. Now communication carries with it photos, emotions and other added extras.

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