social networking

A social networking service is a platform to build 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 social links, and a variety of additional services. Social networking is web-based services that allow individuals to create a public profile, to create a list of users with whom to share connection, and view and cross the connections within the system

Web development as an industry

The World Wide Web has become a major delivery platform for web development a variety of complex and sophisticated enterprise applications in several domains. In addition to their inherent multifaceted functionality, these web applications exhibit complex behavior and place some unique demands on their usability, performance, security and ability to grow and evolve. However, a vast majority of these applications continue to be developed in an ad-hoc way, contributing to problems of usability, maintainability, quality and reliability.