Social Web and America
Julie Carter
INF 103 Computer Literacy
Kim Keel
November 28, 2012

When you think of the word “social” what comes to mind? The first couple of things would not have been the use of social web. The use of the internet as a means of interacting with others and accomplishing simple tasks is a new wave of America. Some may argue that it is invasive and unnecessary, some couldn’t image their life without it.
Social web is referred to as “a set of social relations that link people through the World Wide Web”. Though the use of the internet was underway before the social side came about. In the late 1990's the wider use of personal websites began to spiral. Social “webbing” evolved into 3 stages ranging from 1990-2012 and ongoing. The period that began first could be described as the one way conversation period. During this time the internet was used by site owners that just wanted to inform or be self served. 18,000 pages were up and running at this time. The majority of them had pages that you were limited to just reading them. The was a very ancient approach some thought. This began the period where some owners of more largely visited sites thought about the previous statement and decided to upgrade. Was this out of sheer boredom? It was a very little useful situation. You could only look at the products on some of these sites and have to actually go out to the location to purchase them.
By updating this also allowed the users to exchange thoughts and start networking. Networking is defined as “a supportive system of sharing information and services among individuals and groups having a common interest.” The last thing that completed the involvement was the actual invention of exclusively social networking sites.

Social web took off running. The growth of usage of the internet as a means to interact continues to grow to date. The first sites to gain sure recognition was sites like Classmate.com and SixDegrees.com. These sites allowed you to enter personal information and follow into looking for people of just offering yourself into friendships with others. Another site called Open Diary allowed others to comment on what their peers were saying and created what we now call blogging. A blog is an input entry by a person on a social site on a specific subject or feelings. After a person starts a blog others are allowed to offer feedback, questions, or comments to the author. This is the case if it is a open blog. Most sites allow you to decided who u want to view and reply. If it is a open forum. Now you even have sites like Facebook and Twitter. These sites are known friend base sites. One these type of sites you can create a profile and locate other people and businesses that have also joined. You can upload pictures and videos to these profiles to make them more personal and life like. On friend and person sites you are allowed to add things like who you are and what your about and anything else you want others to know. Facebook has certain security methods that allows people to feel that they are in control. On your personal page that others view you can allow some users to see what others cant. Even businesses like Walmart have a Facebook page. On their pages employees can join and state that they are employed at one of there locations, people can tell others that they like the store or inform there follow friends of sales and customer complaints. They can have thousands of friends and likes everyday added! On sites like Twitter u can focus on just the aspects of what others are doing and where they are going. You can even date online now thanks to social web. Sites like DateHookUp.com allows you to enter your person info and tweak your likes and dislike to help you find other users that you might be interested in meeting and maybe later on date.

The possibilities seem unlimited when it comes to social web. There are even sites that allow you to connect your online accounts to your