Social Database

Social life has a growing importance through computer mediated interaction systems, because there is more necessity in terms of difficulties and social importance for these systems nowadays

Social database has advantages about traditional data collection methods which include direct observation and manual event coding.Data collections generally are limited in time and scope, also they are often error-prone. On the contrary, social databases are high accuracy records of some elements of social interactions.

In general, social data occurs naturally and it is the key which is used by many people working on social databases. Consequently, in social databases, the aim is to let the data tell its story.

 Social Computing

            Social computing is a new computing paradigm that is concerned with the  common point of social behavior and computational systems.

            It is based on creating or recreating social conventions and social contexts through the use of software and technology. For example; blogs, email, instant messaging, social network services, wikis, social bookmarking and other instances of social software illustrate ideas from social computing and other kinds of software applications where people interact socially.

            Social computing has relationships to the growing popularity of social software and Web 2.0, increased academic interest in social network analysis. It absolutely affects software and system developments in the future.It is expected that the scope of social computing will expand and its applications will increase.

Social Network

            A social network represents a map of specified ties, such as friendship, kinship and other relationships between the nodes being studied. The nodes which connected to an individual are the social contacts of that individual. 

            Another purpose of using social networks is to measure the value called “social capital” that an individual gets from the social network. Social network concepts are often displayed in a social network diagram where nodes are the points and ties are the lines.

Social Network Analysis

            Social network analysis (related to network theory) has emerged as a main technique in modern sociology. Also it is very important in  anthropology, biology, communication studies,economics,geography,information science, organizational studies,social psychology, and sociolinguistics.

            Social network analysis (SNA) views social relationships in terms of network theory consisting of nodes and ties (or called edges, links, or connections). Nodes are the individual actors and ties are the relationships between the actors within the networks. The resulting graph-based structures are often very complex. There may be many types of ties between the nodes.

            Research in a number of academic fields has shown that social networks play a critical role on many subjects such as determining the way problems are solved, organizations are run, and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals.