What is social networking?

Social networking can be viewed as a series of activities that are tasked with building or maintaining social networks or meaningful bonds between individuals,groups or institutions. These activities have existing in all communities starting with kin groups. However with the advent of information communications technologies and the World Wide Web and lately social networking applications these activities have taken on new dimensions and meanings. Indeed the term social networking has almost now become synonymous with Web 2 applications such as Facebook, Twitter, or social media sharing sites such as Youtube and Myspace.