Social networking is the grouping of individuals into specific groups, like small rural communities or a neighborhood subdivision, if you will. Although social networking is possible in person, especially in the workplace, universities, and high schools, it is most popular online. This is because unlike most high schools, colleges, or workplaces, the internet is filled with millions of individuals who are looking to meet other internet users, to gather and share first-hand information or experiences about any number of topics, from golfing to gardening developing friendships, or to start a professional relationship

When it comes to online social networking, websites are commonly used. These websites are known as social sites. Social networking websites function like an online community of internet users. Depending on the website in question, many of these online community members share a common interest such as hobbies, religion, or politics. Once you are granted access to a social networking website you can begin to socialize. This socialization may include reading the profile pages of other members and possibly even contacting them.   You can even organize and combine all of your online profiles into just ONE “Whzz Key” profile at http://www.whzzz.com/.

The friends that you can make are just one of the many benefits to social networking online. Another one of those benefits includes diversity because the internet gives individuals from all around the world access to social networking sites. This means that although you are in the United States, you could develop an online friendship with someone in Denmark. Not only will you make new friends, but you just might learn a thing or two about new cultures or new languages and learning is always a good thing.

As mentioned, social networking often //
// involves grouping specific individuals or organizations together. While there are a number of social networking websites that focus on particular interests, there are others that do not. The websites without a main focus are often referred to as “traditional” social networking websites and usually have open memberships. This means that anyone can become a member, no matter what their hobbies, beliefs, or views are. However, once you are inside this online community, you can begin to create your own network of friends and eliminate members that do not share common interests or goals.

As I’m sure you’re aware, there are dangers associated with social networking: data theft and viruses are on the rise. The most prevalent danger though often involves online predators or individuals who claim to be someone that they are not. Although danger does exist with networking online, it also exists with networking out in the real world, too. Just like you’re advised when meeting strangers at clubs and bars, school, or work — you are also advised to proceed with caution online. By being aware of your surroundings and who you are talking to, you should be able to safely enjoy social networking online. Just use common sense and listen to your inner voice; it will tell you when something doesn’t feel right.

Once you are well informed and comfortable with your findings, you can begin your search from hundreds of networking communities to join. This can easily be done by performing a standard internet search. Your search will likely return a number of results, including MySpace, FriendWise, FriendFinder, Yahoo! 360, Facebook, Orkut, and Classmates.

What is HTML?

A guide to learning html for beginners.

HTML are initials that stand for Hyper Text Markup Language

• Hyper is the opposite of linear. It used to be that computer programs had to move in a linear fashion. This before this, this before this, and so on. HTML does not hold to that pattern and allows the person viewing the World Wide Web page to go anywhere, any time they want.
• Text is what you will use. English letters, just like you use everyday..
• Markup is what you will do. You will write in plain English and then mark up what you wrote.
• Language. Some may argue that technically html is a code, but you write html in plain, everyday English language.

HTML is the code behind your webpage and is what your browser looks for to display a webpage, the way the webdesigner intended it to look, and is a series of tags <tags> that tells the browser where to display what. It is really a series of simple commands that you give to the browser, just like telling your dog to sit, and because it is in plain English it is easy to learn. For example, if you want your text to show in a bold type, you command it <bold> to be bold text </bold>, it really is that easy.

Keep this in mind: HTML documents must be text only.
When you save a HTML document, you must save only the text, nothing else. HTML browsers can only read text. Look at your keyboard. See the letters and numbers and little signs like % and @ and *? There are 128 in all (read upper- and lowercase letters as two). That’s text. That’s what the browser reads. It simply doesn’t understand anything else.

Remember that if you are using Notepad, Wordpad, or Simple Text, the document will be saved as text with no extra prompting. Just choose SAVE.

If you are going to start learning to write HTML, it is a good idea to learn to look at other authors’ HTML pages. The actual html potion of the page behind the pretty page you see in front of you now.

Looking at another’s html code helps you learn how things are done and you can copy the style of pages that you like. Please do not just steal and copy the pages, but no one will be upset if you make the style in much the same way. For example, if you were going to build a house, you would look around to see what styles you like before deciding on your own design. Same thing here, look around the web and see what styles you like and apply them to your own ideas.

Here’s how you look at an HTML document (known as the “source code”)

• When you find a page you like, click on VIEW at the top of the screen.
• Choose SOURCE from the menu.
• The HTML document will appear on the screen.

Try it with this page. Click on VIEW and then choose the SOURCE.
It will look like mumbo jumbo right now, but soon it’ll be readable and you’ll be able to find exactly how a certain HTML presentation was performed.

What are HTML Tags?

HTML works in a very simple, very logical, format. It reads like you do, top to bottom, left to right. HTML is written with TEXT. What you use to set certain sections apart as bigger text, smaller text, bold text, underlined text, is a series of tags.

Think of tags as commands. For example if you want a line of text to be bold. You will put a tag at the exact point you want the bold lettering to start <bold>and another tag where you want the bold lettering to stop.</bold> There you have an example of how tags make commands and tell the browser how to display the text. Just like telling a dog to sit. You give the command.

All tags that are opened must correspondingly be closed, just as if you are writing a quoted statement with those “inverted commas”. A tag is closed this way </tag> therefore we open a new tag <bold> and close the tag </bold>

Different tags call different functions. A full list of html tags and their functions is provided here.

Like to write a page of html. C’mon, let’s do it together here.

So keep these points in mind when your networking.

1.Building Meaningful Relationships

Social networking and the human side of it is so important, the more real and transparent you are the better. Therefore you’ll have the trust of people and when barriers are broken down and people actually trust you that’s when your relationships will really grow. When you reach this point and it’s the point you want to strive for, when ye trust each other and when ye just want to HELP and BENEFIT each other, that’s when he magic happens. For example, on twitter I get a lot of direct messages but the people who send them don’t introduce themselves, say my name or personalize it in any way. I understand the time savings of having automated messages and people don’t always have the time but in the long run it’s better to sent a message by hand. Those who do personalize and actually interact with me are the people I trust, the people I remember and the people I want to help more because they put the effort and time into building a relationship with me.

If you always keep in mind that you really are trying to build valuable and meaningful relationships and not seeing them as another visitor, customer or sale,then everything else you do will bring you nothing but opportunities,  responsive followers and lifelong friends.

2.Building Traffic

Basically the more networking you do the greater chance you have of getting traffic. This doesn’t mean the more you bombard and spam people, the more traffic you will get. It means the more real and valuable you’re networking efforts are, the more traffic you will get. Building traffic from certain social networks can be very targeted and very beneficial. For example, if you’re looking for traffic from professionals online then go to linkedin, if you’re looking to target blog owners then go to blog social networks and comment on other blogs. Each social network has their own audience and user demographics so you’re approach to each should be slightly tailored to each one.

3.Building links

Link building is the life blood of SEO. The more links and quality links you get the better and if you can get those links with your choice of anchor text then you’ll rank higher in the search engines. Most of your social profiles will allow you to link to your blog or/and your other social profiles. This is a key to successful blogging, you must build as many links as possible.

4.Increased Visibility

The more social profiles you create, the more content you create on them and the more you interact, as at result you will increase the visibility you, your site and your brand will get and also gaining you trust in the minds of others. Remember don’t spread yourself all over the web if you can’t contribute, interact and give time to each of those networks and communities. People want to be in a community, they want to talk and interact with you but if your not there to care or share then that’s a problem and may be bad for you and your site. Still, the basic point is the more you’re seen, the more familiarity and trust you’ll gain.

5.Business and JV Opportunities

Over time and the more people you meet, the more business opportunities you will come across. You’ll meet other leaders and players in your industry and niche so over time these relationships will grow, ye will understand and know what the other is doing and an opportunity will arise when one person takes the first step and proposes something. I would recommend taking action yourself and not hoping or relying on others to propose something first.

6.Mind-sharing and Insight

The idea here is that you can engage with your target audience and find out new insights. You get a unique perspective into them, their lives and their problems. You can give them help and advice and in return they give you feedback and trust, this also applies to joint venture partners where ye both help each other, so in other words mind-share with each other. This is so powerful to be able to talk to your prospects and audience and hear from them what their point of view is. Social networking is also a great atmosphere to get feedback, research and insight because it’s so human focused. People don’t want to be told, forced, spammed or made do anything but when you Involve them that’s when everything changes.

So there you have it, 6 benefits. The benefits are huge and the results you’ll receive can be huge too.

What other benefits do you think social networking offers?

.GIF
Graphic Interchange File format created by CompuServe. A .GIF file can contain at most 256 unique colors and the compression is not as great as .JPG. The latest version of this format includes many extensions, such as the ability to have a Web browser’s background show through parts of the image (“transparency”), and animation. According to official documentation, the proper pronunciation is “jiff”.

.hqx
File converted from extended characters to a standard ASCII format that can be understood by most computers. Commonly used on the Macintosh platform. See also: .sit

.JPG
Graphics file format created by the Joint Photographers Expert Group. To conserve disk space and transfer time, a JPEG image can be compressed to varying degrees using a “lossy” method (meaning the resulting image is not of the same quality as the original.)

.MOV
File in Quicktime format. Developed by Apple Computer for viewing moving images. See also: .MPG

.MPG
File created in the Moving Pictures Expert Group (MPEG) format. This format is related to .JPG. See also: .JPG, .MPG

.PDF
Portable Document Format. Adobe Acrobat’s format for complex documents, which allows you to create one file which can be viewed on a variety of different computers (even without a web browser) by simply “printing” in a special way.

.QT
See .MOV

.sit
File compressed in the StuffIt format commonly used on Macintosh computers. See also: .hqx

.WAV
File containing an audio sound in Microsoft format. Most commonly used on Windows-based PCs. See also: .AU, RealPlayer

.ZIP
File compressed in the ZIP format commonly used on PCs.

absolute URL
A URL which includes the name of a server, as well as the full path to a document. For instance, http://www.mtholyoke.edu/marylyon/. See also: relative URL, URL

anonymous FTP
An FTP commection established using the username “anonymous” and the email address of the person making the request as the password. This is the type of connection established by a Web browser by default. See also: FTP

bps
Bits per second. A measure of the speed at which modems and other forms of communication hardware talk to each other.

C, C++
Two flavors of a very popular and flexible programming language.

CGI
The Common Gateway Interface specification, which governs how browsers can request services from Web servers; a format and syntax for passing information via HTML forms and queries. See also: Perl

chat
A service available on computer bulletin boards, on-line services and the Internet that lets users type messages to each other. The messages appear almost instantly on the screens of others participating in the chat session.

DNS
Domain Name Server. A database of Internet names and addresses which translates the names to the official Internet Protocol numbers and vice-versa.

finger
A Unix command that retrieves user information remotely.

FTP
File Transfer Protocol allows the transfer of files from one computer to another. It can be invoked from a commandline using the “ftp” command, or from a Web browser using a URL beginning with the ftp: media type.
See also: anonymous FTP

Gopher
A menu-oriented tool used to locate online resources, Gopher was the precursor to the World Wide Web. Many locations, including MHC, no longer support Gopher.

Home Page
This is the first or main page that a particular site or person has. It allows access to the main areas of the particular subject or topic.

HTML
An acronym for HyperText Markup Language, HTML is the language used to tag various parts of a Web document so browsing software will know how to display its links, text, and graphics. See also: SHTML

HTTP
HyperText Transfer Protocol. HTTP is used to link and transfer hypertext documents.

image map
A text file which describes what regions of a graphical image are different hypertext links. The term is often used to refer to the graphical image as well.

IMAP
Internet MAil Protocol. A system that allows a user to download email from a host computer. See also: SMTP POP

ISP
Internet Service Provider. A company which gives its subscribers access to the Internet.

Java
A programming language developed by Sun Microsystems. Its major advantage is that it is cross-platform, meaning a program only needs to be written once to run on a number of different computers. See also: JavaScript

JavaScript
A scripting language in which the code is included in the HTML document. See also: Java

JPEG
See .JPG

MPEG
See .MPG

MIME
Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extentions. The standard protocol for sending non-text files via the Internet. It is often used to send compressed files, or images by email.

Perl
A programming language geared toward handling text data. It is often used to create CGI programs for the Web. See also: CGI

POP
Post Office Protocol. A system that allows a user to download email from a host computer. See also: IMAP SMTP

PPP
Point to Point Protocol. A method of Internet connection that enables computers to use phone lines and a modem to connect to the Internet. See also: SLIP

Quicktime
See .MOV

RealPlayer
A commercial product for playing compressed audio and video via the Internet. The audio portion used to be called RealAudio. See also: .AU, .MOV, .MPG, .WAV

relative URL
A URL which refers to a document by using a shortened form of its path, relative to the document containing the URL. For instance, if the file http://www.mtholyoke.edu/marylyon/index.html is to contain a link to http://www.mtholyoke.edu/cic/index.html, it might be made using the relative URL ../cic/index.html. See also: absolute URL, URL

Search Engine
A program that helps users find information in databases of Web pages or other text files.

Shockwave
A commercial Web browser plug-in which allows you to view interactive multimedia files.

SHTML
Scripted HyperText Markup Language. This is a modified version of HTML which includes special commands for performing certain tasks. MHC’s Document Interface uses this. See also: HTML

SLIP
Serial Line Internet Protocol. A method of Internet connection that enables computers to use phone lines and a modem to connect to the Internet. SLIP is not supported at MHC. See also: PPP

SMTP
Simply Mail Transfer. A protocol for transferring email to a remote computer. See also: IMAP POP

Spam
Unsolicited email or newsgroup postings, often consisting of commercial advertising, which is sent to a large number of individuals or newsgroups. (The name is a reference to a sketch by the British comedy troupe Monty Python.)

Telnet
The program used to login from one Internet site to another. Telnet is a way of accessing a text-based environment, and is frequently used on MHC for email access via Pine.

TCP-IP
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. The basic protocols programs use when communicating on the Internet.

URL
Uniform Resource Locator. The addressing system used in the World Wide Web and other Internet resources. The URL contains information about the method of access, the server to be accessed and the path of any file to be accessed. See also: absolute URL, relative URL

Virtual Reality
Computer Generated technology which allows the user to interact with data that gives the appearance of a 3D environment. The user can navigate around a 3D world and interact with objects in that world. See also: VRML

VRML
Virtual Reality Markup Language. The formatting language used to bring interactive 3D animations to the Web. See also: Virtual Reality

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Please copy/paste the following text to properly cite this HowStuffWorks article:

Brain, Marshall.  “How Blogs Work.”  20 August 2003.  HowStuffWorks.com. <http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/social-networking/information/blog.htm>  28 September 2009.

//

Smart Ways to Blog from AOL Blogs

• More Computer Videos »

­

HowStuffWorks Blogs

Blogs, like the ones at HowStuffWorks, are a lot like keeping an online journal.

Blogs appear on the news pretty often these days. For example, a reporter is tipped to a story by a blog, or a blog reports another angle on a story. Blogs show up in magazines a lot, too.

But there is a good chance you have never seen a blog (also known as a weblog) or experienced the blogosphere. What are blogs? There are now millions of them — where did they all come from?

One of the things that is so amazing about blogs is their simplicity.

Think about a “normal Web site.” It usually has a home page, with links to lots of sub-pages that have more detail. HowStuffWorks is like this, with thousands of information pages all organized under a home page. A small business site follows the same format — it might have a home pag­e and five or 10 sub-pages. Most traditional Web sites follow this format. If the site is small, it is sort of like an online brochure. If it is large, it is like an electronic encyclopedia.

­ A typical Web site has a home page that links to sub-pages within the site. CNN.com is typical of this genre. The CNN site contains thousands of articles all organized into big categories. The categories and all the latest stories are accessed from the home page.

Learn More HSW Staff Blogs How Web 2.0 Works ­Discovery.com: Top 10 Social Networking Sites

­ A blog is much simpler:

• A blog is normally a single page of entries. There may be archives of older entries, but the “main page” of a blog is all anyone really cares about.
• A blog is organized in reverse-chronological order, from most recent entry to least recent.
• A blog is normally public — the whole world can see it.
• The entries in a blog usually come from a single author.
• The entries in a blog are usually stream-of-consciousness. There is no particular order to them. For example, if I see a good link, I can throw it in my blog. The tools that most bloggers use make it incredibly easy to add entries to a blog any time they feel like it.

­­In this article, you will have a chance to enter the world of blogging. You will even learn how to create your own blog and publish it to the world.

Blogging Basics

A typical blog has a main page and nothing else. On the main page, there is a set of entries. Each entry is a little text blurb that may contain embedded links out to other sites, news stories, etc. When the author adds a new entry, it goes at the top, pushing all the older entries down. This blog also has a right sidebar that contains additional permanent links to other sites and stories. The author might update the sidebar weekly or monthly.

Basically, a blog is a lot like an online journal or diary. The author can talk about anything and everything. Many blogs are full of interesting links that the author has found. Blogs often contain stories or little snippets of information that are interesting to the author.

Even though blogs can be completely free-form, many blogs have a focus. For example, if a blogger is interested in technology, the blogger might go to the Consumer Electronics Show and post entries of the things he/she sees there. If a blogger is interested in a certain disease, he/she might post every news article and every piece of research he/she finds on the disease. If a blogger is interested in economic issues, he/she might post links to articles that discuss the economy and then offer commentary on them.

There are people who use their blogs simply as a scrapbook — a form of online memory. Whenever the author finds a link or a snippet of information that he/she wants to remember, it gets posted in the blog. Even if no one else ever looks at it, it is still useful to the author because the blog is a searchable electronic medium that the author can access with a Web browser anywhere in the world.

In other words, a blog can be anything the author wants it to be. The thing that all blogs have in common is the reverse-chronological ordering of entries.

This article may need to be updated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information, and remove this template when finished. Please see the talk page for more information. (March 2009)

A blog (a contraction of the term “weblog“)^[1] is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketches (sketchblog), videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting). Micro-blogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts.

As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs.^[2]

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private and public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, and other technologies. The Internet carries a vast array of information resources and services, most notably the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support electronic mail. In addition it supports popular services such as online chat, file transfer and file sharing, gaming, commerce, social networking, publishing, video on demand, and teleconferencing and telecommunications. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) applications allow person-to-person communication via voice and video.

The origins of the Internet reach back to the 1960s when the United States funded research projects of its military agencies to build robust, fault-tolerant and distributed computer networks. This research and a period of civilian funding of a new U.S. backbone by the National Science Foundation spawned worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies and led to the commercialization of an international network in the mid 1990s, and resulted in the following popularization of countless applications in virtually every aspect of modern human life. As of 2009, an estimated quarter of Earth's population uses the services of the Internet.