Pros and Cons of Social Networking Sites

Abstract

Social network sites (SNSs) are increasingly attracting the attention of academic and Industry researchers intrigued by their affordances and reach. Today social networking commonly refers to all those activities that are carried out within specific online services that provide free space and software tools which allow creating networks of people. In other words, a social networking service is a Web site that allows individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile. Users’ data are not only constituted by vital statistics, but they include a lot of other information which pertains to user hobbies, passions, interests, professional background and so on. This kind of personal data, all spontaneously provided by the user her/himself, permit to create interconnected networks of people who decide to put in common their interests and to have an online identity which fully describes them