The activities that revolve around Social Networking Sites (SNS) have become very loud and clear to the public, professionals and the layman alike. For a casual user, SNS might be only a place to `hang around' just for the fun of it. But for a business entity, such sites provide an ultimate platform to reach their target segments across the world more cost-efficiently. While there are both pros and cons with SNS, no marketer can disregard the power of this medium.

SNS have turned out to become very popular for the last few years and have become the in thing for the youngsters who want to flaunt their presence online. SNS are also pulling the attention of academia and industry researchers due to the affordability and reach of this medium. These sites permit the users to convey their individual opinions and also meet people with similar tastes and interests. These sites are web-based and provide facilities to the users to interact with one another through many ways, such as e-mails, chat rooms, forums, and messaging services, etc. These sites are being used by billions of people across the globe. SNS have proved to become an innovative way for exchange of information.

SNS come in many forms and types. Some act as a bridge to link up with old friends whereas others serve as a tool for professional interaction. Popular SNS are: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Orkut, Bebo and the most recent Twitter. Such networking sites help the users to be in contact, interact and share information with their select groups regarding various topics. According to many, the emergence of SNS is an important development that has helped in personalizing online communication.

Social networking services refer to a wide range of rapidly developing services tools and practices. Social networking services can be broadly defined as Internet- or mobile-device-based social spaces designed to facilitate communication, collaboration and content sharing across networks of contacts.

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