There is a lot of press about Social Networking services lately and Facebook and Twitter are commonly mentioned in the same breath as social networking. This article is a follow up from my interview on Mid West Radio this morning.


Facebook


Facebook is one of many social networking sites; other popular ones in use in Ireland include Bebo, Linkedin, My Space. There are at least 500,000 Facebook users in Ireland and there are 250 million worldwide. It is ranked as the 6th most popular website in the world.


The idea of Facebook is that you become part of an online network of friends, co-workers, school mates and college friends. You then create a profile which is like your own personal home page with pictures of events and information on what you are currently doing. From your homepage you can also install applications that allow you to interact further with your friends by sending messages, playing games such as scrabble, poker, sending gits and over 30,000 other applications.


Facebook has been banned in a number of countries for periods of time, it also has been banned in a number of colleges and workplaces throughout the world due to the amount of time that people spend online.


An example of a famous Facebook profile is here.This profile was used to help Barack Obama to win the US presidential election. He has over 6.4 million supporters.


Twitter


Twitter is a social networking/micro blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed your twitter homepage and delivered to your subscribers who are known as followers. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, or via their mobile device.


A tweet is basically a short message of less than 140 characters that will be displayed on your twitter home page it is much like a text message but is displayed on your profile page. In recent times twitter has grown exponentially and many businesses and individuals are beginning to tweet.


The most followed celebrity online is Ashton Kutcher who has nearly 3 million followers. His profile can be found here.