You can certainly build networks that help promote social interaction through making it easy for people to link together in a variety of ways. However, setting out to build an online social networking site, is more likely than not going to result in failure unless you have a real reason for doing so. On its own, software is not enough, this is all about people.
It’s sometimes easy to forget that the Internet is just people connected by wires, uplinks, frequencies and protocols.
Social networking is an action, it is something that happens between people when they connect around a particular purpose and it has been going on since the dawn of civilisation, social networking is not a new phenomenon, it is just that the medium changes and evolves.
Technology is gradually becoming more user friendly as well as pervasive, it is finding its way into a range of services and devices in increasing subtle and clever ways. This in turn makes it easier for existing offline networks and emerging online ones to stay in contact, cross pollinate and expand.
A social network is not defined by the technology but instead by the people.
