In our study of social networking sites, our main objectives were to find out what services were available and how the services incorporate Milgram’s 1960s research. We were surprised about the number of sites that exist and that many of them mention Milgram, “six degrees of separation” or the “small world theory”. Many of the sites mentioned these ideas in their introductory pages. Some went farther and reflected the theories in the design of the sites with network diagrams and chains of connected people.

Although there are similarities among the social networking services (especially the social sites) there are variations in the quality of the site designs. Further evaluation of the sites would provide data for much more research. Some questions to consider are:

How does the look of a site affect its popularity? We noticed that the business network sites were dominated by the color blue and many social sites were orange. Do the site “tours” have an affect on membership?

How does the use of pictures on the site and in member profiles affect the interaction of members? This would be interesting in the business sector where some sites encourage users to upload a picture of themselves for their profile and others do not use pictures.

How do the communities that exist on the sites conform to or differ from the image that the sites promote?

One way of viewing the phenomenon of the proliferation of social networking sites on the Internet is to see them as an enabling device, or vehicle, accelerating the pace of social connections. To use language from our page on which we discuss the theoretical underpinnings of these sites, the Internet itself is a condition of modernity allowing for more connections than was possible previously. As technology develops over time, this augmentation of social connections is one of its chief functions. One can view history as a linear timeline on which these conditions are developed and perfected. Just as postal delivery, the establishment of shipping and rail connections, the Interstate Highway System, and the invention of telephone and radio served in their respective eras to further the possibilities of connection between human beings and communities, so these sites are serving the same function. They can, of course, be viewed with some measure of skepticism and derision for some of the claims they make, and sites like www.hampsterster.com, if not intended as puns, nevertheless serve as such to those who do not belong to their constituencies. But Friendster and its clones can be viewed (no doubt, will be viewed at some point in the future) as an important milestone in the use of the Internet as a tool by which society is provided with potential linkages, a harbinger of bigger and better things to come.