What is social networking?
The idea behind social networking is word-of-mouth marketing. Groups of people align themselves by interests, identities, and professions and through these alignments build relationships.
Why use social networking?
One is the loneliest number, as the song says. People network socially to meet new people. Finding points of commonality can be difficult in a disconnected world; but in the online world, interests, identities, and professions are variables in a massive database. Sorting these variables can connect the searcher with a social network larger than any face-to-face net-worker could ever imagine.