Functions of Social Networking Services

Social Networking Services (SNS) are the fastest growing type of social software – both in the Internet and in company-wide Intranets. Due to the fact that SNS have emerged just recently and the development speed of the services is enormous, there exist large gaps in research about this type of service. For example, so far there has been no attempt to identify and categorize the basic functionalities of SNS. This is the goal of this contribution. Six groups of functionalities for SNS are proposed and their categorization is motivated. The identification of a distinct set of SNS functions will facilitate the modularization and integration of different social network applications.