Networking or grouping of individuals is known as social networking. Social networking is possible in a workplace, organization and in schools but it is most common in online. The popularity of online networking is more because there are millions of internet users who are looking for friendships and business relationships. Websites that are used for online social networking are called social sites. Depending on the nature of these social websites, the members of these sites shares something in common such as politics, business, hobbies, or religion.

By joining a social networking website:

• You can start socializing with people from the moment you signed in or joined to a social networking website. You can read the profile pages of other members and if you find an interesting profile, you can send an invitation in order to ask him/her to be your friend. If the invited member approves the invitation, then you can contact them directly. Making friends is just one of the benefits of social networking.

• You can share your doubts, questions and opinions to others through message boards. Yahoo answers, forums or such internet message boards are also a part of social networking.

• Social bookmarking is related to social networking in which a particular site is categorized, saved and shared with other individuals. You can share your personal bookmarks and also can discover others bookmarks and then add them to your own collection. Once you have started to share bookmarks with others, then you can interact with them and thereby you become a part of the social networking community. Some of the favorite bookmarking sites are Del.icio.us, Furl and Digg. Internet users can tag their bookmarked sites with keywords. When an individual starts searching a specific tag, then all the bookmarked websites with that tag will appear.

• There are blogging social networks such as Technorati.com sorts out the blogs based on their incoming links and also the tags related to that blog post.

• You can use the social networking sites for advertising as these sites has the potential to reach millions of people by spending less than the traditional advertisements.

• Social networking sites are also used by jobseekers. These sites are helpful in connecting the users with various jobs and institutions they may have worked with. Users can also link with organizations or companies they wanted to work with.

• You can bring traffic to your website by adding a link of your website or blog. By adding the link of your website or blog, your friends will view your website and then friends of friends will view it and so on.

Social networking websites are the new way to communicate and share information with other people. Social networking allows you to connect with friends as well as strangers. But both the users should confirm that they are interested to become friends even if they are strangers to each other. You can upload pictures, videos and profiles which can be shared with other people in the community.

Social networking is the present day tool for communication and to maintain relationships.