Web Development
GUIDE

Social Network Application Development

Description: Web applications can be created for a variety of different reasons. But the increasing amount of social network websites on the web is leading to a trend of having specific applications designed for this very purpose.

Social networking (and bookmarking) websites are expanding faster than anyone dreamed they would. The increasing number of members - going way into their millions - joining all the time means that these sites need to constantly adapt to be able to keep up with the demands made on their system.

A big part of the nature of these sites is also the safety, security and protection of the members concerned. There have been complaints that members have received unwanted spam and other types of emails that they have neither wanted nor solicited, and this is exactly the kind of area where new developments in web applications can be extremely useful.

For example, web applications can play a big part in one of the most important pieces of a person's membership - their user profile. While people can generally decide how their profile will look and how much information it can contain, some social networking sites have started to limit the usability of the applications in use here, to make for smaller and neater profiles.

This highlights an important area as far as social networking application development is concerned. It's vital that new applications put the website's members at the forefront of the whole process, and while these applications may be designed according to the brief of a specific networking site, it's also important that they are able to accommodate all the security features required to keep the users safe and free from spamming from other members as much as possible.

This is somewhat of an irony as far as these sites go. Part of the charm of social networking sites is that we are free to share and bookmark any information we find online that we think is worth sharing. Web applications can make this happen - but they can also restrict our use of the site. While it may seem as if web applications can actually hinder our use of sites like MySpace and Facebook, in actual fact we should thank them. They have the power not only to streamline what we do on these sites and make certain tasks easier to perform, they also have the power to keep us safe from those people who try and use the sites to spam others.

As these sites develop it's clear that web developers will continue to try and create web applications which tread the fine line between creating a better usability of the site, and keeping safety and security as the number one aim.