ABSTRACT

A social network is a social structure made of individuals (or organizations) which are connected by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige. This is a kind of technology that focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.  MySocials is a social networking application. The application is developed using Adobe CS4 Dreamweaver, fully supported with PHP and JavaScript functionalities. MySQL is used as the database management system for its flexibility and high level of data and information security.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Certification

Dedication

Acknowledgement

Abstract

Table of content

Chapter one: General Introduction

• Introduction
• Aims and Objectives
• Significance of the study
• Research Methodology
• Scope and Limitation
• Organization of the report
• Definition of technical terms

CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF RELEVANT LITERATURES

2.1       History/concept of social networking

2.2       Social impacts

2.3       Social good

2.5       Issues and dangers of social networking

2.6       The future of social networking

CHAPTER THREE: PROJECT METHODOLOGY

• Method of data collection
• Analysis of existing system
• Problems of existing system
• Proposed of system specification
• Advantages of the proposed system
• Design  and implementation methodologies

CHAPTER FOUR: DESIGN, IMPLEMENTATION AND DOCUMENTATION OF THE SYSTEM

• Design of the system
  • Output Design
  • Input Design
  • File Design
  • Procedure Design
• Implementation of the Systems
  • Hardware support
  • Software support
• Documentation of the System
  • Program documentation
  • Operating the system
  • Maintaining the System

CHAPTER FIVE: SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

• Summary
• Experience gained
• Conclusion
• Recommendation

References

Appendix

1. System flowchart
2. Program flowchart
3. Source Listing
4. Computer output

CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

1.1     Background of the study

A social web media is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on facilitating the building of social networks or social relations  among people who, for example, share interests, activities, backgrounds, or real-life connections. A social network service consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Most social network services are web-based and provide means for users to interact over the Internet, such as e-mail and instant messaging. Online community  services are sometimes considered as a social network service, though in a broader sense, social network service usually means an individual-centered service whereas online community  services are group-centered. Social networking sites allow users to share ideas, activities, events, and interests within their individual networks.

The main types of social networking services are those that contain category places (such as former school year or classmates), means to connect with friends (usually with self-description pages), and a recommendation system linked to trust. Popular methods now combine many of these, with Facebook, Twitter and Google+ widely used worldwide, The Sphere (luxury network), Nexopia (mostly in Canada), etc.

Social web technology ties people together in new ways. It makes it easy to meet or reconnect with people, discover and share ideas and content, and consume news and events across the Internet. Friendship takes on an entirely new dimension online, and media consumption and sharing – photos, music, and most of all video – are changing and rates never before seen on the Internet. It is a revolution that spawns companies like MySpace, YouTube, Photobucket, and even Facebook.

The notion that individual computers link electronically form the basis of computer mediated social interaction and networking was suggested in the early advent of the computer networking technology but its application found eminence in the 90s and has evolved into a more complex topology of human interaction. There were many early efforts to support social networks via computer-mediated communication, including Usenet, ARPANET, LISTSERV, Bulletin Board Services (BBS) and EIES: Murray Turoff’s server-based Electronic Information Exchange Service (Turoff and Hiltz, 1978, 1993).

Social network technology focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network technologies are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail, Social Network Sites (SNSs) and instant messaging services.

Social networking has encouraged new ways to communicate and share information. In this research work, Social network sites (SNSs) used interchangeably with social network technology, which are being used regularly by millions of people will be analysed from the onset to the present state and forecast for future advancement. While it could be said that e-mail and websites have most of the essential elements of social network services, the idea of proprietary encapsulated services has gained popular uptake recently.

1.2     Statement of the problem

Due to the current state of technology in Nigerian schools, there has not been any procedure put in place to handle any way students relate together effectively in terms of sharing ideas and knowledge over common issue of interest. However, distant interactions are limited in term of educational social networking. The project undertake a research into the best possible means of developing a social web media which can serve as an alternative existing social networks and educative blogs. The program executes on localhost server with Apache 2.0.

1.3     Significance of the research

Social networking websites help people connect with others who share their interests, build online profiles and share media such as photos. In the world today almost every aspect of life are getting computerize in other to reduce the workload and stress on human, so this project has also make it subject as to computerize the mode of students interaction in other to simplify the process of solving problem students might encounter in academic or research cases. Significance of this project is also drawn from the benefits of popularly known social network sites such as MySpace, Facebook and educative blogs such as DaniWeb, About.com, etc. Some other significance of social web are as follows:

Government applications

Social networking is more recently being used by various government agencies. Social networking tools serve as a quick and easy way for the government to get the opinion of the public and to keep the public updated on their activity. The Centers for Disease Control demonstrated the importance of vaccinations on the popular children’s site Whyville.

Business applications

The use of social networking services in an enterprise context presents the potential of having a major impact on the world of business and work. Social networks connect people at low cost; this can be beneficial for entrepreneurs and small businesses looking to expand their contact bases. These networks often act as customer relationship management tool for companies selling products and services.

Educational applications

Almost 60 percent of students who use social networking talk about education topics online, and more than 50 percent talk specifically about schoolwork. Yet the vast majority of school districts have stringent rules against nearly all forms of social networking during the school day — even though students and parents report few problem on students’ behaviors online. Social networks focused on supporting relationships between teachers and their students for learning, educator professional development, and content sharing.

1.4    Objectives of the study

This project research will be focused on building online communication of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. The objective of this research is:

1. To access the growth pattern of social network technologies with relevant historical timelines alongside the critical examination of the history of social network, growth, impacts and challenges.
2. To analyze the various technologies and platforms available for social networking and examine the context and structure of social networking: focus on how the structure of ties affects individuals and their relationships;

• To identify issues, dangers, shortcomings and criticisms associated with social networking and outline the social good, impacts and benefits of social networks

1. Discuss speculations and theories about present formations and future prospects;

1.5     Scope and limitation of the study

This research work brings extensively the concept and structure of social networking technology. The scope of the study covers only the local area network, where people can be connected to each other within a close range. In this research study, users are limited to only registering of information on the system without being able to send or receive mail to one another due to lack of access to the internet. The research is necessitated by the non-availability of materials such as, appropriate program development tools, textbooks, internet accessibility, effective interconnection of computers (network) for testing and implementation of the proposed system and software and hardware components for program diagnosis during the development phase.

1.6     Organization of the report

Chapter one covers the general introduction to the project and explains the statements of the research problem, significance, aims and objectives of the study, scope and limitations and organization of the report.

Chapter two covers review of past projects and discussion of related topics. Chapter three of the project covers project methodology and analysis of the system. This includes the method of data collection employed, description and problems of the existing system, description and advantages of the proposed system, design and implementation techniques used.

Chapter four entails design, implementation and documentation of the system. The design involves the system design, output design form, input design form, database structure and the procedure of the system. The implementation involves the hardware and software requirements. The documentation of the system involves the operation of the system and the maintenance of the system.

Chapter five, being the last chapter of this project covers summary and conclusion of the whole work, experience gained from carrying out the project and recommendation for further research.

1.7     Definition of technical terms

1. Social network: A social structure made of individuals connected by one or more specific types of interdependency (relationships), such as friendship, kinship, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.
2. Betweenness: The extent to which a node lies between other nodes in the network. This measure takes into account the connectivity of the node’s neighbors, giving a higher value for nodes which bridge clusters. The measure reflects the number of people who a person is connecting indirectly through their direct links.
3. Centrality: This measure gives a rough indication of the social power of a person based on how well they “connect” to others. “Betweenness”, “Closeness”, and “Degree” are all measures of centrality.
4. Closeness: The degree an individual is near all other individuals in a network (directly or indirectly).
5. Clustering coefficient: A measure of the likelihood that two associates of a node are associates themselves. A higher clustering coefficient indicates a greater ‘cliquishness’.
6. Cohesion: The degree to which people are connected directly to each other by cohesive Groups are identified as ‘cliques’ if every individual is directly tied to every other individual, ‘social circles’ if there is less stringency of direct contact, which is imprecise, or as structurally cohesive blocks if precision is wanted.
7. Degree: The count of the number of links to other people in the network. This may also be known as the “geodesic distance”.
8. Eigenvector centrality: A measure of the importance of a person in a network. It assigns relative scores to all nodes in the network based on the principle that connections to nodes having a high score contribute more to the score of the node in question.
9. Path Length: The distances between pairs of persons in the network. Average path-length is the average of these distances between all pairs of persons.
10. Radiality: Degree an individual’s network reaches out into the network and provides novel information and influence.
11. Reach: The degree any member of a network can reach other members of the network.
12. Structural cohesion: The minimum number of members who, if removed from a group, would disconnect the group.
13. Network analytic software: Network analytic tools that are used to represent the nodes (people) and edges (relationships) in a network, and to analyze the network data. These tools provide mathematical functions that can be applied to the network model.
14. Social Network Aggregation: The process of collecting content from multiple social network services, such as MySpace or Facebook. The task is often performed by a social network aggregator, which pulls together information into a single location, or helps a user consolidate multiple social networking profiles into one profile.

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