1.1 Background of the study
A social web media is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on facilitating the building of 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/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Most social network services are web-based and provide means for users to interact over the Internet, such as e-mail and instant messaging. Online community services are sometimes considered as a social network service, though in a broader sense, social network service usually means an individual-centered service whereas online community services are group-centered. Social networking sites allow users to share ideas, activities, events, and interests within their individual networks.
The main types of social networking services are those that contain category places (such as former school year or classmates), means to connect with friends (usually with self-description pages), and a recommendation system linked to trust. Popular methods now combine many of these, with Facebook, Twitter and Google+ widely used worldwide, The Sphere (luxury network), Nexopia (mostly in Canada), etc.
Social web technology ties people together in new ways. It makes it easy to meet or reconnect with people, discover and share ideas and content, and consume news and events across the Internet. Friendship takes on an entirely new dimension online, and media consumption and sharing – photos, music, and most of all video – are changing and rates never before seen on the Internet. It is a revolution that spawns companies like MySpace, YouTube, Photobucket, and even Facebook.
The notion that individual computers link electronically form the basis of computer mediated social interaction and networking was suggested in the early advent of the computer networking technology but its application found eminence in the 90s and has evolved into a more complex topology of human interaction. There were many early efforts to support social networks via computer-mediated communication, including Usenet, ARPANET, LISTSERV, Bulletin Board Services (BBS) and EIES: Murray Turoff’s server-based Electronic Information Exchange Service (Turoff and Hiltz, 1978, 1993).
Social network technology focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network technologies are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail, Social Network Sites (SNSs) and instant messaging services.
Social networking has encouraged new ways to communicate and share information. In this research work, Social network sites (SNSs) used interchangeably with social network technology, which are being used regularly by millions of people will be analysed from the onset to the present state and forecast for future advancement. While it could be said that e-mail and websites have most of the essential elements of social network services, the idea of proprietary encapsulated services has gained popular uptake recently.
Due to the current state of technology in Nigerian schools, there has not been any procedure put in place to handle any way students relate together effectively in terms of sharing ideas and knowledge over common issue of interest. However, distant interactions are limited in term of educational social networking. The project undertake a research into the best possible means of developing a social web media which can serve as an alternative existing social networks and educative blogs. The program executes on localhost server with Apache 2.0.
1.3 Significance of the research
Social networking websites help people connect with others who share their interests, build online profiles and share media such as photos. In the world today almost every aspect of life are getting computerize in other to reduce the workload and stress on human, so this project has also make it subject as to computerize the mode of students interaction in other to simplify the process of solving problem students might encounter in academic or research cases. Significance of this project is also drawn from the benefits of popularly known social network sites such as MySpace, Facebook and educative blogs such as DaniWeb, About.com, etc. Some other significance of social web are as follows:
Government applications
Social networking is more recently being used by various government agencies. Social networking tools serve as a quick and easy way for the government to get the opinion of the public and to keep the public updated on their activity. The Centers for Disease Control demonstrated the importance of vaccinations on the popular children’s site Whyville.
Business applications
The use of social networking services in an enterprise context presents the potential of having a major impact on the world of business and work. Social networks connect people at low cost; this can be beneficial for entrepreneurs and small businesses looking to expand their contact bases. These networks often act as customer relationship management tool for companies selling products and services.
Educational applications
Almost 60 percent of students who use social networking talk about education topics online, and more than 50 percent talk specifically about schoolwork. Yet the vast majority of school districts have stringent rules against nearly all forms of social networking during the school day — even though students and parents report few problem on students’ behaviors online. Social networks focused on supporting relationships between teachers and their students for learning, educator professional development, and content sharing.
1.4 Objectives of the study
This project research will be focused on building online communication of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. The objective of this research is:
1.5 Scope and limitation of the study
This research work brings extensively the concept and structure of social networking technology. The scope of the study covers only the local area network, where people can be connected to each other within a close range. In this research study, users are limited to only registering of information on the system without being able to send or receive mail to one another due to lack of access to the internet. The research is necessitated by the non-availability of materials such as, appropriate program development tools, textbooks, internet accessibility, effective interconnection of computers (network) for testing and implementation of the proposed system and software and hardware components for program diagnosis during the development phase.
1.6 Organization of the report
Chapter one covers the general introduction to the project and explains the statements of the research problem, significance, aims and objectives of the study, scope and limitations and organization of the report.
Chapter two covers review of past projects and discussion of related topics. Chapter three of the project covers project methodology and analysis of the system. This includes the method of data collection employed, description and problems of the existing system, description and advantages of the proposed system, design and implementation techniques used.
Chapter four entails design, implementation and documentation of the system. The design involves the system design, output design form, input design form, database structure and the procedure of the system. The implementation involves the hardware and software requirements. The documentation of the system involves the operation of the system and the maintenance of the system.
Chapter five, being the last chapter of this project covers summary and conclusion of the whole work, experience gained from carrying out the project and recommendation for further research.
1.7 Definition of technical terms