We have all heard about social networking websites but there are only a few who really knows what it means. Social networking can be defined as a grouping by some individuals together into specific groups just like a small community or a neighborhood, or a group of college friends, office colleagues sharing the same views and ideas in general. Social networking has now become very popular online. This is because the internet is filled by millions and millions of persons who are looking to meet other internet users with similar interests and develop friendship.

There are many popular social networking websites such as the Facebook, Google Groups, Yahoo Groups, Twitter etc, which has millions of users spread all over the world. Today social networking websites have so popular not only for developing friendships, but also as a wonderful tool for business, advertisement and generating income. As a result of this many persons are creating their own social networking websites and putting them up on the internet. However for a successful site that will draw the attention of the users you have to develop it and make it a centre of attraction.

If you are the owner of a social networking website you can develop it further by bringing interactivity to it with single sign on, user profiles, comments, ratings and recommendations. You can also add the ability to allow your visitors to register and sign in to all your websites with a single username and password. You can use those tools/software and solutions that lets you to use widgets and web-services and hence can work with your existing website or content management system with almost no changes being required. Through these tools and software the user profiles can be configured to capture the information that is important and relevant for your website. You can also add the article tool bar widget which will work seamlessly with your existing content management system and also allow the visitors to add comments, rate content and even recommend articles to others. There are some additional widgets that will allow you to display most commented articles, top rated articles etc across your website.

You can offer real time chat for your website. Through the website chat you can allow your writers, editors, columnists or celebrities to choose to be online and interact with your website visitors via a web based chat system. Registered websites users should be able to see an online icon next to the name of a writer and click on it to chat with them. Your website should also have a group chat solution that can be embedded in any web page or article to spur a spontaneous conversation amongst your registered website visitors.

The other areas which you may add for Social Networking Development of your website are:

Breaking news and headlines which will enable your visitors to seek and know crucial information.

*Coverage of sporting events and scores in live.

*Stock Market Analysis.

*Coverage of ongoing events of interest like Presidential speeches, Beauty Contests, World Summits or Budget presentations.

*Blogs