Reliability determines which data methods emerge consistent findings, which similarities in observations would be seen and how conclusions are come up by other researchers. On the other side, validity estimates which data collection method is accurately corresponding what is measured or intended to be measured and the degree of which the researcher is measuring. (Saunders et al. 2009)

Research philosophy is based on the nature and the evolution of knowledge (Saunders et al. 2007). The importance of using a specific research philosophy is that it will support the research methodology and clarifies the ideas of the research. Saunders et al. (2007) introduce three types of research philosophies:

Worms are types of malwares which are self-replicated and able to spread st. A worm is designed to collect users private information such as usernames and passwords or bank account information. The stolen information by worms might be handed to the illegal and underground organizations and usually such information are used for identity fraud or robbery of bank credits (Weimin et al. 2009).

Social sciences refer to the analysis of relationships between different people such as individuals, groups or organizations interacting with each other. The analysis of social networks deals with patterns of relationships among social actors (Breiger 2004). Social networks can be regarded as constructions of relations and entities such as actors. Wikis are consistent with these qualitative forms of social networks. This represents the main idea of writing articles in common (Cunningham 2005).

Most of people join social networks to maintain connections with friends, mily and create new ties with new people from different nations and different cultures, although distinct differences in typical usage by site exist. Facebook users intended more on friends, sharing ideas/photo/video and use integrated services like chat/email. On the other hand, LinkedIn users are usually business people and professionals who try to introduce their services or connect with other part of the world of marketing, while MySpace users tend to create new ties with friends and artists they meet on the site.

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The aim of this section is to provide a short overview of the chapters and to show the overall structure of the thesis.

The growth of social networking was noticeably st within a few years and has completely changed the landscape of Internet. On most of social networks, users are easily attracted to open social networking because the network is used by their friends and their peers. Each Individual can lose or refuse relationships when these connections are no more useful. However, recently, the users of social networks are tended to open friendships or through joining specific social groups to add someone to their friends list or connections. The enormous potentiality of social networking sites in case of supporting the huge number of members and allowing the formation of sub communities or small groups inside the network has engaged everyone to connect to these networks and use this new medium. It is not exaggerating to say that almost all of the social units, organizations, professionals, students and other parts of traditional society have noticed the power of social networking and are aware of the value that will be added to their activities while joining this phenomenon.

Most of the social networking sites provide services for users free of charge which enables everyone to join these communities without any cost. Most of the professionals, unions, political groups or humanitarian causes are able to join these online communities, expand their activities and make new connections free of any expense which was high cost to do in traditional societies.

On the other hand, a few people are against the development of social networking and they believe it may encourage unrealistic communications among people. When sitting behind a computer, some users dare to publish everything which might be inappropriate. In addition, privacy risks caused by integrated applications on social networking sites, Social Networking, unknown people who hide themselves behind unreal profiles and the amount of time people consume using social networks have raised the concerns. Some individuals suspect that social networks collect personal information which might later be accessible by illegal organizations. Also, the survey shows that some users do not care while using sites and some of them were victims of security and privacy issues such as identity theft and cyber stalking. On the other side, webmasters interpret the consent when users become member as an informed consent page which does not guarantee that users information would not be given to the second party. In ct, members do not have enough knowledge or power to control the flow of personal information to the secondary use. Furthermore, there is not any conventional law or regulation to address such issues. Usually it is difficult to prove that a ct is private for example when a user publishes improper content on a profile and the damage seems to be impossible to estimate.

At the time of this research, one of the most known social networking sites Facebook has over 500 million users from all of the world (Facebook 2011), allowing the content sharing easily from everywhere and enabling users to connect to other people from different locations and different cultures while is not surprising that academics and professionals started widely to discuss the use of social networking sites. The quick adoption among people and the free services provided by webmasters made it well-known, the development has been so quick and shows a lack of research in the area. This research aims to fill this gap and also to highlight advantages and some neglected negative consequences. The author of this research aimed to investigate the popularity of social networking between people both through the primary research (Survey) and secondary research (Literature study).

Syndication is identified as a specification which is common in all of the interpretations of Web2.0. Advertising, content, creation effort, storage, and profile as identity are included. A technical interpretation of Web2.0 is along with a vision which exists in marketing and business and leads these professions to the success. From a community perspective, Web2.0 focuses on Syndication, however with more emphasizes on social aspects rather than economic aspects. Since Web2.0 is a general term, it can be disappeared as quickly as it is adopted. The supported technologies may change quickly, too. In the meanwhile, Web2.0 is more likely to be as a suitable generic descriptor which is available in many different directions for example over the dotcom implosion period from the early years of the century. The real changes are still happening and this revolution will roll over completely the old Web1.0 (Clark 2008). RSS (Really Simple Syndication) or web feeds are example of Web2.0 features using Tag/ Vote functions.

LinkedIn services can be used to offer job positions, finding jobs, connecting people by business opportunities offered or suggested to the connected profile in the connection list of a user. LinkedIn helps members to find companies which are interesting to connect and join to the specific chain of business. Search tools of the LinkedIn offer a particular company and its statistics are also included. For example, the proportion of women and male employees, the most common titles of positions of the company, the location of company, etc. (Wikipedia 2011)

In other words, descriptive research provides a comprehensive snapshot of the aspects of observed events. The researcher observes then explains what was seen. This type of research is useful when the problem and questions are well-structured (Babbie 2004).

All in all, the research area of this study is formulated as following:

Three types of research design exist: casual, exploratory and descriptive. These research design is based on different situations, problem area and the target audiences (Qurashi 2009).

Based on the chart above, most of users prefer the user friendly environment, accessibility and number of users as the most important ctors to choose a social networking site. Although, some users believe that supported languages and performance are not ctors which could affect the choice of specific site. As an option for this question the users mentioned some other ctors as followings:

By contrast, there are some concerns and critics which target this new trend. Some researchers have recently focused on analysing the specific aspects of social networks which might be more dangerous as the potential harm is unexpected. For example, webmasters who might deliver the private information to specific companies, manucturers, advertisers or third party developers and might ignore the privacy of users. Furthermore, the amount of time users spend on the sites, weak friendship ties, the parents concern for children and teenagers are at the center of critics. On the other hand, it is rational that more value will be gained when some security and privacy considerations done properly by users. There is also a need to adopt and form new laws which can support victims in case of illegal network activities.

The research design reflects the structure of studied problem (Kerlinger 1986). Research design is a general plan to address the research questions (Saunders et al. 2007). In ct, research design is a model for the data collection and analysis of data by helping the author in the allocation of limited resources and choosing the essential choices (Phillips 1971).

Accessing the pool of personal information stored in database of social networking sites or by collecting from third-party applications and misusing the identity of a user can be a big security challenge. A successful extraction of users information from social networking sites can cause spam attacks (Huber et al. 2009).

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Above all, the usage of social networking sites is widely adopted among people and seems to be irrational to prohibit them from joining social networks just because of concerns over the privacy and security. However, the users should be aware of the risks and have control over their information. Also most of webmasters provide comprehensive security options to empower users having enough control on what they share, the content they share and to control the target audiences to whom their private information is visible and accessible.

The methodology of the research used in this thesis is defined in the second chapter. This chapter argues the chosen methods, approaches, strategies, data collection methods and description of the primary and secondary research phase in detail.

Internet has become a big part of our daily life while we are all connected to the most part of the world via such a mass network. Some of the most important trends impacting growth in online activity are:

The aim for an explorative study is to reach a better understanding or to investigate the feasibility of deeper research and to boost a method for further research. Explorative research design of study is at most important when stepping toward new horizons and always can create new knowledge in a specific research field (Babbie, 1995). The research problem might be difficult to understand and unmiliar to the researcher, so more information is needed to define the concept and framework of the research to help the researcher understanding the problem area.

Questions which focus on the experiences of users while using social networks as being advantageous or disadvantageous.

The consequences of sharing personal information on social networks are not easy to predict in case of identity fraud, while remains a high potential risk.

Facebook is the most popular social networking site started its activities on February 2004 and gained popularity so st. People can join Facebook easily, add friends, send messages and update their personal profiles in order to notify friends. Recently, Facebook hit a record with more than 500 million members from all over the world. Facebook estimated that people spend more than 700 billion minutes every month using Facebook and 50% of these users log on to this web site every day. In average, each Facebook member has 130 connections with other personal profiles and 80 connections with community pages, event pages and groups. Monthly, over 30 billion piece of content such as web links, notes, photos, videos and blog posts are shared. Facebook headquarters, web developer company and web servers are located in the US and 30% of members are inside the US while the rest of users are connected from other parts of the world. Facebook, by the help of 300,000 members, supports around 70 languages, hosts 20 million applications and plug-ins every day aPopularity of social networking advantages and disadvantages_ Social Networkingnd over 2.5 million websites have integrated Facebook. Facebook also offers many services however the normal features are supported and developed by the host company, the increase in the popularity of features supported by third-party developers for business people, developers and entrepreneurs as well as supporting normal members offering services via mobile devices (Facebook 2011).

Google Scholar is a way to search the scholar literature. It provides the search across different disciplines and sources such as peer-reviewed s, e-books, the theses, abstracts and articles, published by academicians, professionals, universities and scholarly organizations. Google Scholar provides the relevant research from all of world of research. (Google Scholar 2009)

The Kaspersky Lab collection reported over 43 000 malware relating to social networking sites in the end of 2008.

In this thesis, findings are solid affirmation that social networking is the latest trend where the study highlights the st growth and increasing popularity of social networking. Social networking enables people to use the internet and web2.0 based applications to revolutionize traditional socializing. The successful growth of social networks is achieved by the emergence of Web2.0 where a collaborative environment and collective content sharing are valuable elements. Through the findings of contemporary research which also confirmed by the results of the survey, friendship is the most important perspective of users in social networking and plays a key role in the big popularity growth of social networks. Users primarily encourage their relatives, friends, classmates or co-workers to join, then in another phase the people of the same interest from everywhere connect to each other. More than half of the survey participants approved that they are visiting social networks every day and for more than one hour which shows that S.N. sites are not only interesting places to be, but they are becoming an essential part of peoples life.

Boyd and Ellison (2008) define social networks as:

Regarding the content popularity, next chart classifies the most popular and less popular content of the sites by the responders choice.

Next question inquires users to indicate which negative impact or concerns they feel while using S.N. sites:

Online marketing increased significantly as Internet is the most vital part of todays business activities, e.g. advertising is shown a big growth, as more business people allocate their budget to boost their business on the web. (Jayamaha 2011)

Web2.0 can be a wisdom Web, a centered Web for people, read or write on the Web and participative Web. Web2.0 equips the Web through collaborating and interacting methods, especially on peers through social collaborative intelligence and presents new horizons to equip the Web and encourage the users in an efficient way. The term Web2.0 is generally associated with applications based on the web which cilitate user centered collaboration and design. In ct, Web2.0 allows users to do more than retrieving information by providing data and exercising some control over that data (OReilly 2004). The examples of Web2.0 are social networking sites, wikis, blogs, video sharing sites, etc.

The latest trend in World Wide Web is social networking portals. Social networking has gained popularity so st, for instance, Twitter growth rate of tweets (posts) exceeds 1300% in 2009 in comparison with year 2008 (Seeking Alpha 2009). The active users of social networking sites expected to pass 230 million in 2008, however, Facebook is registered with more than 500 million active members in first quarter of 2011 (Facebook 2011).

The figure30 shows all possible scenarios of evaluation of a research when determining validity and reliability. The first one from the left shows the situation when the target is achieved via a consistent way but the results are not valid because the value of responses are wrongly measured. So the target is missed and the results are not valid. The second scenario happens when the results are randomly spread around the target and in average the right answers exist for the group. But the results are not consistent which means the lack of reliability. The third figure shows the consistent hit of the target meaning that the measurements are both reliable and consistent. (Johansson 2010)

CiteSeerx is a digital library, scientific literature and search engine which provides computer and information science articles. CiteSeerx helps to improve the writing of scientific literature and helps the improvements in usability, availability, cost, and timeliness in the scientific and scholarly knowledge base. (CiteSeer 2011)

In both social and natural sciences, experiment is aimed at both the explanatory and exploratory research to answer How or Why questions. The research will be conducted in two groups and each group members is similar basically in almost all aspects. The researcher uses one group as control group and the other one as experimental group. Dependent variables are measured in both groups and the results are compared. Then the researcher puts some manipulations only in experimental group. In the end, the dependent variables will be re-measured. This research strategy can be conducted in both laboratory and field experiment or any of them (Saunders et al. 2009).

The questionnaire published online for more than 4 weeks and a total of 51 responses received, however it will remain open to responders for a period of a year. Since the target group of participants at the first step is the youth group who are more students, most of responses received from university students.

This dissertation has benefitted from all of the mentioned databases to study the recent research publications within the area of study and for me as the author, is so important to connect the previous established knowledge, results and examples to my study in order to demonstrate successful knowledge creation in social Networking. Within the area of the research, many textual sources exist, out of them it was impossible to include every single detail and therefore it is important for me to sample the literature.

The scientific textbooks often contain the results of recent researches and samples of published scientific practices preparing a basis for further research which will form the foundation of current research (Kuhn 1996). Theoretical study connects the previous and current research to provide a well-structured scientific contribution.

In recent years, some discussions concerning the relative merits of qualitative and quantitative methods for research stressed on using a mixture of both methods as some researchers use each methods exclusively while others are interested to utilize a combination of both (Blaxter et al. 2001). The author of this thesis used a combination of both quantitative and qualitative methods to develop the research. This combination empowers the author to collect in-depth data while measuring general attributes of popular social networks and also the attributes of the members of social networks.

Users provide any content on social networking sites which might be improper. The users are also less aware of their connections, third party applications or friend of friends who might have published improper data or if they can access to their data without permission.

More than 50% of participants believe that free cost is one an important ctor for popularity growth, as well as being a strong tool for globalization.

As mentioned before, some organizations, academics or employers limit the users to access social networking sites while being on campus or within working hours. Another question regarding the users who ignore the company or academic rules is asked to assess whether the users are motivated to use sites while being prohibited.

Social Networking is one of the most important technologies via Web2.0. The explanation of Web2.0 was always debating between the researchers while there were a few s about the definition of web2.0 (Yourdon 2006).

Next question inquires participants on which social networking sites is more popular. Since it is not possible to put all of the social networking sites on the list, 8 of the most the popular sites exist in this part of the questionnaire. There are also options to choose the frequency of usage to assess the popularity of specific site according to the frequency of usage.

Individuals are also asked whether they feel any need for security consideration while joining and using social networks.

Tim OReilly in 2007 introduced a definition for Web2.0 as:

Using Rich User Experience which is another specification of Web2.0, Web pages and Web services are ster and less cluttered. This specification has made more users come back to the web services (Cashman 2010). The XHTML, CSS 2.0 are examples of Web2.0 benefiting from Rich User Experience technology.

This research strategy is advantageous when different texts published by different authors within the certain research field are studied and to reach a stand point, the opinions of different studies are summarized.

The concept of OReilly seems to be ambiguous, but Murugesan (2007) presents a more specific definition of Web2.0:

To investigate the popularity of social networking and to find out and analyse the advantages and disadvantages

In this chapter, the findings of the survey will be shown in form of charts and graphs then a short analysis will follow them to provide a connection to the literature study and prepare a basis for the discussion chapter of the thesis.

Privacy is a rising concern in social networking sites. While social networking sites are growing rapidly in popularity, current policy configuration are complicating for normal users to set and configure (Cutillo et al. 2009). Recent studies have consistently shown that users have difficulties to understand and apply security considerations (Church et al. 2009). Sites such as Facebook allow users to have control over connections and friends who can visit their profiles, but sometimes is difficult for basic users to define the applied level of security. For example, Facebook enables users to access an option as Privacy Settings, which allows members to change which profile data for which specific connection is possible to be viewed. Facebook offers another option which enables members to customize which part of shared information can be visible or hidden to the connections and friends.

Evaluation method is an essential element of a research to evaluate the quality of research. The importance of validity is an ambition to raise the scientific value of the research.

Popular social networking sites have embedded basic services such as instant messaging, email, chat and sharing tools but many of the supported applications are provided by third-party developers. A potential source of privacy leakage is the tracking of user actions and collecting profile information by third-party advertisers and data aggregators (Krishnamurthy 2008). Increasingly, many users are able to handle a big part of their activities on social networking sites by shrinking the amount of private information available to unknown connections and untrusted applications. But for many of known and most used applications on social networking sites like Facebook, complete access to the private information of users is not necessary, since Facebook warns users if they want to use or download a third-party application, the users by allowing the access of third part applications to their profile information accept the privacy risks (ibid).

This chapter presents the results of the primary research phase which gathered through surveying in form of a questionnaire. The designed questionnaire consists of 26 questions where most of the questions are multiple choices to encourage the responders putting time to answer. Since the author aimed to make the survey available for all of the people who use social networks, the survey is designed and published on the web using the powerful tools of kwiksurveys.com. Furthermore, in order to increase the reliability of the research, the author decided to design a questionnaire which targets the proper sample of responders and to have valid responses in line with the objectives of the research, the content of questionnaire is divided into three main categories:

Blog is a word from the term web log which is a web-site or part of a web-site (Blood 2000). Blogs are typically updated by individuals with explanations, commenting and describing events or other topics like photo, music and video. The entries or comments are usually shown in reverse chronological order. Blogging means to create or add content on a web log. Blogs enable the users to add comments and even be in contact with each other via messaging using widgets on blogs and this specification distinguishes blogs from static websites (Mutum and Wang 2010).

Increase in cloud computing and online services such as internet banking, online booking email and online meetings.

LinkedIn offers an interconnected community for experienced professionals from all over the world, including more than 170 industries covering over 200 countries. To do business and accomplish the marketing goals, LinkedIn introduces the members to the world of business and enabling the members to collaborate with qualified professionals (LinkedIn 2011). LinkedIn found in 2002 and officially launched in May 2003, diversified the business model with revenues of advertising and users membership fees. Currently, it has more than 100 million users worldwide with more than 50 million users coming from out of the US. The services of this social networking site are available in six languages.

The popularity of social networking is undeniable. One idea behind this popularity is that it is functioning on many levels of interaction among people, from the mily members to the nation and also among the nations. The best part of social networking is that all of these websites provided an easy way to join and this helps to be more attracting for todays youth who are less patient to fill up long registration forms. Soon after joining, users request for new friends and become active members of the social networks, then they might know someone on their friends list as well and this is how the network becomes more and more popular. This popularity has brought the new opportunities both for users and webmasters. On the other hand, the emergence of social networking may have made the users neglect the negative consequences and disadvantages.

The growth of mobile networking using mobile devices/ netbooks that increased mobile connection and provided unlimited accessibility to the web. (Netage 2009)

Social networking sites are popular web pages where users with common concern or interest come together, meet the new people with same interests, make new connections with other people or other groups of the society, and over ally form a new virtual community on the web services provided by web2.0 technology. In this part of the chapter, the most popular social networking sites will be introduced and their popularity will be discussed.

Twitter founded by Jack Dorsey and started first services on July 2006 aiming to be the first real-time information network which connects the people to the information of common interests. Twitter founders have announced a motto We present the best way to discover what is new in the world as their strategy of a micro-blogging service where at the heart of this social networking site, tweets which are less than 140 characters, play the biggest role as a small piece of information sharing. Twitters simplicity unlike other social networking sites, has significantly helped the quick adoption of this web site among people where texts are the only shared piece of information. Users can register on tweeter quickly, follow other members of common interest, send or receive tweets or have other members followed by their tweets. (Twitter 2011)

Social networking is experiencing year by year growth and the increasing popularity of social networking has been apparent on the web from the year 2006. Its no surprise when learning that Americans are very interested in the new services of social networks. They account for one quarter of registered users of the world which proves they are still ahead of Europe (Nexopia 2011). Almost everyone has experienced social networks once, but we can still wonder about their popularity rating.

Nearly 16% indicated media content on social networking sites interesting which dominates the content popularity in comparison with other contents. On the other hand, 12% of users found finance, business and marketing an uninteresting content. Politics, health care and academic afirs are subjects that have nearly the same percentage of interested and uninterested users.

The most common and well known strategy of research is to survey. A survey is mainly associated with deductive research approach and is followed in both descriptive and exploratory research. A survey is a method for collecting information applied by posing a number of pre formulated questions in a predetermined order for example in a questionnaire form drawn to a sample of people to be a representative of a specific population (Hutton 1990). In a survey as a research strategy, questionnaires are not the only research strategies as structured interviews and observations can be used but the questionnaire is always chosen as the most common one.

According to Saunders et al. (2007), a questionnaire is an ideal method or a research strategy which can be conducted better with standard questions and leaves room for different kind of interpretations. Questionnaire is a standard research strategy which enables the researcher to collect the opinions of a sample of large number of people with less effort. Questionnaire can be answered individually or it may target a group of people. Additionally, the design and the content of questionnaire are as important as it can assess and change the rate of responses (Saunders et al. 2007).

Explanatory research design focuses on studying a problem to explain the relation of different variables (Saunders et al. 2009). Explanatory research aims to develop a theory that is used to explain the phenomena precisely which is generalized from the study. The research in this thesis is initially based on the relationship between social networking and users, therefore the purpose is exploratory and descriptive not explanatory.

This chapter discusses the results presented in the previous chapter within the area of empirical research and literature study.

Wikipedia owns the first rank when it comes to the meaning of collaboration. Before the emergence of Wikipedia, the Britannica was the only information source as an encyclopedia, also About.com and some other sources existed, where they never experienced collaboration. After 2001, Wikipedia dominated the world of information source in both content quality and quantity.

Key steps for processing data for analysis are to code, classify or categorize data in form of theoretical concepts (Saunders et. al 2009). When analyzing the theoretical concepts, text analysis is done in form of qualitative data processing which means spending hours and hours of time to read and re-read the data, then to create and assign codes. This is not different from the analysis of data while coding means giving rise to the insights as well as to the patterns (Babbie 2004). An important purpose of the analysis is to build a deeper view where sometimes is known as objective view. Since the research in this thesis is aimed at popularity of social networks and these virtual communities are most popular in western countries, the selection of text and previous published research study are mostly from the s of western countries.

The study in this thesis is aimed at generating knowledge about the importance and adoption of social networking between people and to describe how much popular social networking is. An immediate target group for this research are the informatics researchers. The analysis and results of this study will be a basis for further research in the area of social networking as well as introducing positive and negative aspects. Furthermore, the research sheds some light on different aspects of social networks where social networking communities are considered as target group. The results also contribute to the users of social networks as well as the webmasters to achieve the target of successful knowledge creation. By the way, the results of this study can form the future literature of social networking, which addresses researchers, members of social networking sites, professionals and platform designers for future plans and further development within the research area.

Social networking originated from social groups organized around a unifying theme (religion, culture, education, etc..) which form a kind of informal networking dedicated to a third party, meetings, etc. With the advent of the Internet, social networking has taken its new dimensions, appeared in new forms and built new opportunities. The internet is moving toward supporting social life. By the development of computer mediated communication, the old offline meeting between the people changed to happen in a new place Web. The evolution of web systems have initiated and sustained social relationships via social networking systems. Social networking focuses on online web based services, platforms and sites which create social relations and social communities mainly over the technology of Web2.0. This new computer- mediated social relation is formed to cilitate social interactions among the people while each user is registered and identified by a profile which generally represents a real member in the real world. This new medium offers a variety of web-based services to enable users to interaSocial Networkingct through connecting profiles, instant messaging, sharing ideas, photos, videos, discussing, sending email and using many other services and applications. Boyd and Ellison (2008) believe that the main type of social networking is to connect with classmates, co-workers and friends as a recommendation system built on trust.

Social networking plays an important role in forming the social interactions of individuals on the web. Most known social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are welcoming the increasing number of users and are changing to big virtual community spaces where members interact with their friends and their acquaintances without any cultural or geographical boundary. Such availability has shaped a large data sharing space on the Web which was never built before. These social communities are built on the features of Web2.0 as the basis platform; a platform for social web which is a group of Web applications to provide a technological and ideological basis for social networks and empowers the web to exchange and design the user-generated content (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010). Social media can be found in many forms such as social networks, blogs, weblogs, wikis and video sharing communities (Weber 2009). Weber (2009) also describes that search engines are included in definition of social web as reputation aggregators aimed to aggregate the websites with the best service.

On a popular social networking site, each member has a profile on which he/she may combine personal information: address, marital status or photo. It is also possible to integrate RSS feeds from the blogs, share photos and videos and build up friends list. The strength of social networking site such as Facebook is based on the growing number of members. The 25-35 ages constitute the majority of registered users, it enables the users to find many members of a professional network, finding friends and contact them to be in touch. The number of potential interactions with other members is a second ctor for potential popularity of such sites. Furthermore, developers can freely create applications: prediction of the outcomes for example Champions League, trade beer or smiles, offer tests and games of all kind. Additionally, it is possible to create and join groups and causes of all kinds; to applaud the ban on landing, or humanitarian causes.

Wikis are adopted successfully in big projects such as Wikipedia,new york asian escort model an encyclopedia with millions of entries in hundreds of languages which is being edited by millions of writers and the content sharing is highly relied on users collaboration. Furthermore, in wikis the settings are set up as Web2.0 applications for content sharing (Klamma and Haasler 2009).

Some researchers believe that online social networks has a negative influence on relationships and psychological well-being hypothesizing that this kind of relationship replacing ce to ce friendships (Coget et al. 2002). A question regarding the impact of social networks asked participants where surprisingly half of them confirmed that social networking sites have helped their loneliness, although 18% believe that S.N. is not helping loneliness because of weakening physical ties.

First questions aimed at specifying the gender and the age group of the participants to identify the attributes of members of social networks. Around half of the users of social networks are between 25-30 years old and 65% of the participants of the survey are males.

The chart above refers to the most important services provided by social network sites. The participants of the survey have selected sharing of ideas/photo/video as most popular activity with the percentage of 28 where e-mail/chat and connecting with friends are chosen as next popular activities. Although, third party applications provided by external developers are llen in last place of popularity among users.

When a web service is completely independent from any specific platform, this capability is called software as a service. Since this specification enables Web2.0 technology to be compatible with all platforms, more and more web pages and web services are on the route of offering SaaS (Software as a Service). (Wikipedia 2011)

Sampling method aims to determine the criteria to choose and study the specific literature in text analysis (Patton, 2002).

IEEE Xplore (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) is a rich database founded in 1988 containing full-text databases and e-journals, conference proceedings and standards in technology and science, specially is a proper database for literature study in computer science and information systems.

As seen in the graph above, 13% of participants use social networks in the class time and 6% connect at working hours without employers permission.

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Regarding two methods mentioned in (2.3.1 and 2.3.3), the authors approach to the research in this thesis is clear as being exploratory and descriptive.

Also another definition by Weaver and Morrison (2008) on social networking adds: in todays electronic media, social network sites empower individuals by using Internet and Web based applications to connect and interact in new and easy ways which were impossible before.

In this chapter, the methodology used in this thesis is presented. This methodology is summarized as followings: The research design is exploratory and descriptive, the study approach is deductive and used data collection method is a combination of qualitative and quantitative method however the data analysis is more qualitative data analysis. The author of the thesis has given extreme importance to this study to be highly reliable and valid and while evaluation of research will be found in the discussions chapter.

According to ComScore data on August 2010 (Internet Traffic Report 2010) Facebook is the most time consuming webpage standing above Google and Yahoo where users spend over 41.1 billion minutes in month.

This part of the questionnaire asks users about the advantages of social networking. In most of the questions of this section, users are asked to leave additional comments or ideas.

Exploratory studies present a useful method for analysing current situations, finding new ideas and development in a different context (Robson 2002). When the problem is not clear or the area of investigation is new, exploratory research is valuable (Saunders et al. 2007), (Cooper and Schindler 2003).

The reason behind the study of online social networking is that social networking is in its inncy and as much as this paradigm matures, more sophisticated applications and web sites are expected to emerge. It is unpredicted that social networking sites are eventually becoming so popular for both personal and commercial online interactions. Such popularity will be advantageous and will have potential risks and disadvantages. In this chapter, at first, the definition of social networks is given; following a short historical overview of social networking, Web2.0 as the basis technology of social networking sites and its characteristics will be introduced. Then the most popular social network sites are presented, the reasons behind the growth in their popularity and the range of user interactions they allow are included. Additionally, this chapter compares the most important features of popular social networking sites in order to understand their structure and properties as a necessary step to identify the causes of the popularity growth. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of social networking are coming.

Two types of data collection are available to conduct a research. The difference between the two types of data collection is that primary data will be collected by the researcher according to the objectives of the research and based on which data is required for answering the questions of the study (Ghauri and Gronhaug 2005). All of secondary data were primary data for another study. Both primary and secondary research can produce quantitative or qualitative results (Babbie 2004).

Social networking sites have gained popularity among all people because of the many unique features and various services they offer. Although there are thousands of social networking sites, a few of them have gained big popularity. In this section, the author will highlight some of the most important features of popular social networking sites in comparison with each other.

Tagging allows the shared content to be rated or categorized by members and users helping the st popularity growth of Web pages (Murugesan 2007). The advantages of this technology provided by Web2.0 are both for users and web masters to adapt themselves with new conditions and to provide more response to users needs. According to Marlow et al. (2006), Instead of pre-defined and static published contents, users provide their personal tags in order to organize information in a new way which can be an adaption between users needs and web masters development plans.

In another attack, MySpace in 2005 infected by a worm called Sammy and spread very st which utilized the loopholes of MySpace.

Most viewed site on the net is social networking site while having almost all of integrated web services.

Web2.0 does not bias with a hard boundary, but more likely, it has a gravitational core. It is possible to visualize the Web2.0 as principles that make together a system of web sites that represent all or some of the practices locating on a different distance from that central core.

Social networking sites host registered users coming from all over the world, from different nationalities and different cultures. No matter what color, what kind of ethnic the users are, people can join, connections can be made, new friends can be added; photos, ideas and points of view can be shared. Such a potentiality is regarded as a big step toward globalization which was not possible through interactions of traditional society. For instance, according to the latest statistics of Facebook published in February 2011, users are coming from 212 different countries (Facebook 2011).

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Descriptive study is another approach to the design of a study. The objective of a descriptive research is to present a comprehensive profile of people, events and situations where the treated problem must be clear before the research (Robson 2002). Such research has been the main method of study, when the initial phase is completed by performing an exploratory research; the researcher identifies specific objectives and goals then describes further a method for conducting research.

Traditional information exchange was based on one-to-one distribution of data between a sender and a receiver. As said before, Web2.0 is associated with web platforms and applications that enable collaborative information sharing in online communities where social networking sites are based on, enabling the information sharing in forms of one-to-one, on-to-many and many-to-many. When two people benefit from working together, this situation is known as a synergy (Corning 1995). In terms of information sharing, the st growth of social networking significantly helps the synergy of collaborative information exchange where each user shares information as well as receiving appropriate information.

Questions regarding the popularity of social networking sites which ask about users perspectives and interests.

The third chapter aimed at literature study revolving around the problem of the thesis. As the secondary research phase, the literature review sets out another phase of investigation based on what the author has studied as the primary research.

A kind of design, built in a way that fulfills the possibilities and needs of the high end user enabling them to change some options in the design. This kind of design is easier to navigate and is cleaner in appearance (Cashman 2010). For example, iGoogle is a homepage designed according to User-Centered design.

The first social networking website was Geocities in 1994 (Cotriss 2008) and Classmates.com which began operation in 1995. Company of Friends, was the next online network offered by Fast Company Business Magazine launched in 1997 and introduced business networking on the Internet. Other sites have followed them soon after, including Sixdegrees.com, which established in 1997, Epinions.com as a circle of trust in 1999, followed by European equivalents Ciao, Dooyoo and ToLuna. Many of early social networks tried on bringing people together to connect with each other by chat rooms, and enabled users to share personal information and ideas via personal webpages (Wikipedia 2011). The newer generation of social networking sites began to flourish with the emergence of Makeoutclub in 2000, however from 2002, online social networking began to appear based on web2.0 technology. This form of social networking, commonly used on online communities, became particularly popular in 2002 and flourished with the advent of the web site called Friendster. Friendster is using the social networking model circle of friends (developed by the British computer scientist Jonathan Bishop. The popularity of social networking sites has grown rapidly, so much so that in 2006, MySpace has had a higher rate of visited pages than search engine Google in 2006. (Nexopia stat 2011), (Wikipedia 2011)

Advertising on social network sites with millions of users visiting every day is a big opportunity both for business people and web masters. The advertisements could be misleading or irritating for users in social networks.

Interaction is a vital element in social activities. The researches cited in the literature study seem to agree that social networking is growing rapidly while the interactions and connections have removed the geographical and cultural boundaries. As an approach to the popularity growth of social networking, each webmaster of social networks has an objective (Hoegg 2006). Furthermore, the nature of the interactions in social networking is content sharing. Members post content which is associated with other member and with other users who recommend the content of their interest. The content might be of any type and the platform of the site according to the purpose of specific site may support specific content type which can be temporal in nature like blog contents and might be primarily non-textual such as media sharing on YouTube (see table5). In such a way, users provide links to other users which might be based on trust or same interest. Common interest in addition with old friendship ties and relationships, form the huge number of connections on social networks as a key success for the popularity growth. Regarding the findings of the survey, a so popular web site like Facebook which allows the users to share the content of any type confirms the literature study discussing the attributes of a popular social networking site. More findings of the survey stress that single site users who more frequently use Facebook, find it more useful in conventional term of networking and developing friendships rather than only socializing. The survey also shows that most of the users of social networks are 25-30 years old which bears an idea in mind that this new phenomena is widely adopted between youngers and students who seek new horizons while being eager to connect with different people and most of them believe that social networking is advantageous rather than being harmful. Many of them believe that social networking has strengthened their friendships and as an interesting point, a few of them mentioned that they overcome shyness while joining social networks.

To conduct a survey as primary research through investigating the opinions, users habits and perception of the users on social networks.

To collect literature for the dissertation, different material in different databases are studied. Several rich databases as mentioned in the followings were essential for the author of this thesis to collect the necessary information as literature study. Among these, each database delivers information in specific format such as e-books, journals and s.

The goal of this thesis was to employ methods of research that are both valid and reliable. For this purpose, the primary research was aimed at designing a survey in form of a questionnaire targeting the proper sample of users who have enough experience in using social networking sites and to increase the reliability of responses, the questions sent before head and enough time given to responders. In addition, in order to increase the result quality, the survey was designed with questions of multiple choices to attract all of target sample of users and for those who are interested to put more time, final questions left room for comments, ideas or experiences that users might have on social networks. Due to good will of participants, the survey received many ideas and new experiences of users of social networks that helped the author to focus more on some impacts of social networking for example in case of the loneliness. On the other hand, the author aimed to choose the most known resources and searched through the very recent publications to accord the latest findings with the results of survey. Surprisingly, the secondary research phase which was done through literature study in almost all of the cases was in line with the results of survey and helped the analysis of results to be consistent. Above all, both in literature study and in surveying, careful attention was given to provide valid and reliable research

Research strategy defines the procedure of research which corresponds to the purpose of research and answers the research questions. To clarify the research strategy, the researcher needs to express the role of the primary (empirical) and secondary research (theoretical) if are applicable. The theoretical study in a research can be applied in many ways. As a sample, the theoretical material may affect the researcher by selecting data and it may also be applied for analysis. Also, the theory could emerge as result of the research (both from collected and analysed data). Several research procedures exist that can be used as empirical research strategies such as case study, survey and experiment. (Saunders et al. 2009)

Inductive approach refers to the movement of specific observations to broaden theories. On the contrary, the deductive approach starts from general concepts to specific. Researcher in a deductive approach examines theories then narrows down to specific problems which are testable. To generalize results, the researcher uses quantitative ways. In words, the difference between two approaches is that deductive approach tries to test the theory but the inductive approach builds the theory (Saunders et al. 2009). In this thesis, the problem is based on existing theories and the intention of this research is to create more knowledge in specific aspects of the study. For this purpose, a deductive approach is adopted in this thesis.

Cyber stalking is to use social media or internet to harass a person or an organization (Wikipedia 2011).

To define the concept of social networking and to find out why social networking has a big role today.

The first chapter of thesis is the introduction which provides a background to the study and research problem. Additionally, in the introduction, the objectives of the research and the area of the research are defined.

In this section, the study as a whole will be overviewed and the conclusions points are added. An overall discussion of the results from the study is also found in this section.

Social networking sites empower the people to create and follow the relationships on the web. In other words, social networking tries to boost peoples social capital. As social communities are based on communications, the reason behind using a social networking site is to benefit from communication cilities provided for users (Coenen 2006). Since different types of social networking sites are developed and gained popularity over the last few years, each of them support and produce specific types of relationships. The emphasis of different relationships of different types is shown in the table below.

In a quantitative method, the researcher needs to be able to develop hypothesis which is proper, have skills to test the hypothesis and interpret them in a descriptive form. In contrast, in a qualitative research, no statistical calculation aimed to establish correlations. In a qualitative method, the variety of techniques such as interviews, observations, analysis of text and documentation or combining them to cover multiple purposes in the study is possible (Yin 2009).

Blogging and social networking revolutionized the traditional social communities where the social activities are brought to the web.

Qurashi (2009) adds that social networking is a big opportunity both for employers and job seekers where both can benefit from a larger selection pool in an interactive recruitment method.

Dynamism in content of Web2.0 services offers a new generation of blogosphere which empowers the conventional media. These Web2.0 services are highly proactive and dynamic. (Oreilly 2005)

More people collaborate to the information sharing as the openness of web2.0 has brought such a possibility. (Oreilly 2005)

Blogs are always providing tools and applications to enable users adding new content, posting a particular subject or news feeds. Typical blog may support text, photos and links to the related blogs, web sites and other media. The possibility for readers to leave text as comments in an interactive way is an essential specification of blogs. Many blogs are in text form, however some blogs supporting artistic topics, contain photographs photo blog, audio podcasting, music MP3 blog, videos video blogs(Mutum and Wang 2010). As of 04th April 2011, 159,163,790 blogs exist (BlogPulse 2011).

Immense information exchange via internet and big growth of consumer accessibility to the information has changed the traditional business activities where both companies and consumers meet their needs in online activity. (Jayamaha 2011)

The chart above shows that Facebook is the most popular site while 70 % of the participants of questionnaire use it often. Some sites such as blogs and forums are not frequently used by users however the participants use them as they need. Other sites such as LinkedIn which is a professional business social networking site (see 3.3.2.4.4) or MySpace which is popular between the art ns (see 3.3.2.4.3) are not popular between the participants. Another option of the question enables the participant to add other sites where some old web sites like yahoo 360 and Orkut named by two responders.

SamSok is a comprehensive search portal which enables the researches in Swedish universities to access library e-books, catalogues, e-journals and other materials needed for research and study. Samsok provides overall searches in many databases simultaneously.

The main purpose of this thesis was at first step to study the popularity of social networking and then to detect the advantages and disadvantages. The findings of survey as primary research phase and literature study as secondary research phase shared two perspectives, In particular an investigation on the most popular social networks such as Facebook and other well-known sites such as wikis, forums and blogs linked with the perspectives of users on social networking, built interesting data.

Accessibility is a key success for the popularity growth of social networking sites since the people who access the internet are able to join these networks easily. In some situations or in specific conditions, the access to these networks is limited or the users are prohibited to join because of political conditions for example in some countries (some middle-eastern countries), academic rules which limit the accessibility on campus or security concerns that some organizations such as military are aware of. The survey asked the users of social networks to choose whether they have any accessibility limitation and where the connection is limited.

Connections are basis of interactions in a society and social networks provide connection cilities to link the people where such cilities are attractive for users and are key steps for the rapid growth of the websites. Facebook (2011) announced that each member has around 130 friends in average. The Figure 18 shows that most of the respondents of the survey have 200-500 friends and less than 2% have more than 1000 friends

Indeed people have felt impacts of social networking as positive where both in literature study and the survey, the most important aspect of social networking is that the people from all of the world are able to join free of cost, find friend and connections of their interest, share and discuss ideas and form a big multicultural community. With barely less side effects, social networking has been entitled to have a positive influence on development of web applications in case of integrating internet services in social networking sites. In ct, in the last couple of years, social networking sites have become the cornerstones of socializing and are growing richer by the time.

In this chapter, the results and findings of the primary research (the questionnaire) are presented and analysed. The data collected from the questionnaire are shown in form of graphs and charts.

Each small piece of contribution is necessary for a Web2.0 service representing a big community of collaborations. Millions of these contributions may change the site to the state of utmost importance. For example, a media company (employing hundreds of journalists) has now been easily beaten by the blogging platforms such as Blogger and WordPress in the production of a great resource in much less time than before. (Cashman 2010)

Worldwide Twitters popularity has experienced a significant growth in 2009 in comparison with year 2008; hit a record of 1300% growth. Today, Twitter has more than 200 million users, posting 65 million tweets per day and delivering 800,000 search queries every day. (Wikipedia 2011), (Sysomos 2009)

Millions of people use social networking to connect, meet and share. Social networks are configuration of relationships and social ties between people in ways enabling people to connect together through many offered services in a range from casual friendships to mily members (Adkins A. M. 2009). Thanks to the Internet, the geographical distance is not a limitation for social ties and individuals are able to connect to each other and make social connections using specific design of social networks. These new social communities enable the people from everywhere to form a new kind of social friendship.

The last section of the thesis presents the ideas emerged from the research as a basis for future studies.

Social networking sites enables professionals, academics, students and all of the people to meet each other and to make connection with the people of their interest. Such a potentiality is also advantageous for those who seek new opportunities such as those who seek job. A survey compared online recruitment with traditional recruitment, reported that online recruitment enables the employer to access a larger pool of potential employees (IRS 2005).

In this thesis, which is an information science field of study, the researcher presents his epistemological position where the difference between positivism and interpretivism is considered (Saunders et al. 2007).

Social networking sites such as Facebook, have integrated many of online activities as supported services offered to the users. Facebook provides many services to the members, although the services other than basic ones are designed and integrated by other host companies while the biggest growth of third party applications is dedicated to third-party developers. In 2008, Facebook hosted over 30.000 applications from external providers (Ustinova 2008). Such a possibility has attracted many people and professionals to use social networking as a development platform.

Online entertainment such as gaming, video/music/photo sharing, gambling activities and dating remarkably impacted the on-line usage.

Web2.0 services are not bounded to the client download condition. It is also independent from any particular operating system in order to access Web pages.

The case study may be decided to do as a main strategy of research and can be conducted when the phenomena are complex and are mixed with the organizational structure of company. According to the research questions, the researcher in case study chooses to focus the study on only one or on multiple cases. Furthermore, in a case study, both qualitative and quantitative techniques can be used as data collection method. (Yin 2009)

The security issues and threats to Internet are also affecting social networking sites. In social networking, people ignore the original warnings and alerts which make it easier for malwares to spread. Additionally, social networking has some negative impacts which were not experienced before.

At first view, this study is formed by both approaches. This is in line with the idea that the processes of both approaches are not certainly exclusive (Ghauri and Gronhaug 2005). This method helps the author to test the theories and introduces new knowledge according to the literature study and through primary research as a questionnaire.

MySpace is a social networking website founded in the United States which makes the users able to create a personalized Web space, to share information and to make a customized blog. It is also known as a host for many web pages for bands and DJs who usually display and store their musical compositions. MySpace creates social ties by offering a personalized experience around entertainment and connecting people to TV programs, movies and celebrities based on their interest (MySpace 2011). MySpace leads the Web2.0 technology allowing users to customize their profiles. In 2006, MySpace was the most popular social networking site in the US and in April 12th 2008 MySpace had over 240 million users, however by the growing popularity of Facebook and Twitter, the popularity growth of MySpace slowed down (Smith 2009) and on early 2011, the holder company of MySpace put it on sale but still not found a potential buyer (Wikipedia 2011).

The current research revealed limited aspects of social networks and might lag behind the st growth of social networking sites. The author feels that if the scale of study becomes larger, more characters of users and a better demography will be identified.

The popularity and the value of social networking are made by the large number of users joined to these networks and has motivated many organisations to utilize them efficiently for their activities. Although, it is difficult to gather the real number of existing social network sites, a statistical study in 2005 shows that Web hosts over 200 active social networking sites (Rainie and Horrigan 2005). Social network sites such as MySpace is one of the well-known social networking sites, hosting more than 95 million members, while Facebook on 2008 reported a growth rate of 116 per cent over a year (Nielsen 2008). This phenomenon attracted many companies to invest a lot of money to advertise on social networking websites and use the information provided by the users to extend their business according to the customers needs. These organisations benefit social networking to extend marketing and build loyalty among customers.

Two major methods for research are quantitative and qualitative. Information systems have the basis in a different reference disciplines prospecting distinctly the theoretical research of important problems to study and the methods to study them (Mendelson et al. 1987), each of them is considered in different ways of collecting data and analysis. In a quantitative method, data collection and data analysis is based on numerical data. On the contrary, the qualitative method focuses on data collection techniques and the analysis that generates non-numerical data (Saunders et al. 2009). In other words, quantitative method focuses on numerical data rather than frequencies and stresses on experience or meaning. Quantitative methods (experiments) prepare information which is reliable and irly easy to analyse statistically. Quantitative methods are connected with the experimental and scientific approach and are criticised for the lack of an in-depth description (Robson 2002). Furthermore, qualitative methods are methods of data collection which are related to describe the meaning, rather than drawing the statistical conclusions. On the other hand, qualitative methods may risk the reliability which gains in terms of validity, providing in-depth and rich description. To be able to gain the core studies, collecting both types of data is an optimal method. (ibid)

Further research could also be conducted on analysing the specific ctors which may affect the behaviour of users to choose specific type of friendships or connections. In addition, a study on the specific services which webmasters of each site offer might help detecting success keys for extension of social networks and development of integrated applications.

As mentioned in the literature review, the st growth of social networking and the time that users spend on social networking has gained stest growth in years 2008-2009 (see 3.3.2.4.1 and 3.3.2.4.2). The findings of this surveys also confirms that more than half of the participants (65%) are experiencing social networking sites for more than two years, meaning that they joined the sites before 2010 confirming that they obtained membership within the high growth years.

This is not surprising that most of participants have a high education level whereas the questionnaire is more answered by the academic people. This is a big opportunity since academic people are able to answer the questions precisely and able to help conducting the survey in a scientific way specially in understanding their situation on social networking as well as being able to express their experiences.

More than 50% of the respondents are aware of security and privacy on social networks; however the rest of them do not pay enough attention to the privacy risks. Church (2009) believes that it might be difficult for some users to interpret, understand and apply security considerations.

Final question of the survey intended to inquire users on any experience they have had on social networking sites in case of security and privacy. According to the results of the survey, users have encountered the cases: unknown connection/friend requests, Irritating messages and spams more than the others, although some other users complaint about third-party applications and advertisements on social networking sites. A few of users have also added in the description of the question that their personal photos and profile information have been used to create lsified profiles. Cyber stalking was also experienced by responders where they have been victim of unknown people with unreal personal profiles in case of invitation on dating and in another case, user is encouraged to join illegal campaigns providing wrong information about activities.

The importance of Web2.0 as a lead technology where social networking is based on, convinced the author of this thesis to introduce some of the significant specifications of this version of web. The aim of this part of the chapter is to present a summary of the specifications of Web2.0 to illustrate a basis for the new phenomena of social networks.

Currently, the new internet applications enabled users around the world to join in larger and more developed social networks that replaced ce-to-ce friendships and traditional social interactions. This big advancement in social networking sites has benefited from the features of Web2.0. First services provided by social networking sites are the possibility to connect to people and share. However, the recent popular social network sites such as Facebook have integrated other Web services such as e-mail, chat, entertainment applications and media sharing capabilities to their websites. Social networking is now broadly defined as a social structure made of individuals, groups and organizations that are correlated to each other by one or more kinds of interdependencies. Such interdependencies are in form of ideas, common values, friends, interests, etc. (Boyd and Ellison 2007)

Also based on Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2007), three main methods for developing an exploratory research are commonly the literature search, interviewing experts and conduct interviews with focus groups. This approach has a key feature as being flexible (Ghauri and Gronhaug 2005). Exploratory research is conducted at the initial phase of the recent study of the author to help gathering relevant information about the subject and problem area. If the research questions were not clear, this method of research enables the author to know all about the situation and the development area.

In 2009, Mikeyy which was a worm, attacked Twitter and made some changes in profile of users with irritating messages.

Web2.0 services are not dependent to the administrators. The new services of Web2.0 follow a self-service method (Oreilly 2005). This method does not rely on administrator to allow or reject requests from users. Such a service is well implemented by Google called Google Absence which is a self-service platform. This service helps the users deploying advertisements on their web page or blogs easily.

Web-based sites which allow individuals to:

The aim of this chapter is to introduce different research methods and to clarify the method undertaken in this thesis in order to achieve the objectives of the research. This chapter addresses the methods used for collecting data, analyzing, introducing and evaluating the research results. Different alternatives for design, strategy, research approach, data collection methods and data analysis are also presented.

Science Direct born of an Elsevier tradition which is a scholarly communication and often followed a vision for the digital library of the future It provides one of the worlds most advanced web based systems for technical, scientific or medical information delivery (ScienceDirect 2009).

According to the rate of responses acquired from the survey about the perspective of users on social networking sites, the friendship perspective with 23%, socializing with 13% and Learning perspective with 12% are the most important perspectives of users, where branding perspective is less popular among the users with 3%. The reason behind such rates is that most of people prefer to be in contact with friend, old classmates, etc. rather than using a popular site such as Facebook to do business. Figure18 shows that most of users connect to the S.N. sites at home.

To specify more details about the users, next questions classify the education level, the region from where participants access social networks sites and the occupation of the users.

With the aim of knowledge, information and quality, the springer develops, manages and spreads knowledge in form of e-books and journals on the Internet. More than 150 Nobel Prize winners have published their articles, books and dissertations on Springer. Through the Springer, the information technology publications are most known. (Springer 2011)

A case study is often conducted in explanatory and exploratory research which enables the researcher to find the answers of What, How and Why questions. (ibid)

Business people and companies have recognized the importance of developing the brand and building relationship with customers which can be achieved by participating in social networking. The customers also attracted by social networks where they can find their needs, argue about specifications and features, send ideas and receive feedbacks from the other experienced customers and benefit from suggestions of connected people about specific brand. Harris and Rae (2010) argue that a successful business in the future will be achieved via social networking and stresses the role of social media as a big change toward new potentialities of marketing. According to a research in 2010, amongst 30 businesses in the UK, the ct of participating in social networks with key customers is recognized by companies as a development strategy and to expand business (Harris and Rae 2010).

Two types of research approach are inductive and deductive. Following a deductive research is applicable when the theory of the research is tested by conducting the research logically and coming up with conclusions are possible through logical reasoning (Ghauri and Gronhaug 2005). An inductive research approach starts with collecting data as first step then develops the theory as data analysis. (Saunders et al. 2007)