ABSTRACT
Social networking sites have become imminent components of modernday communication channels. Boyd and Ellison (2007) defined social networking sites as “web based services that allow individuals to (i) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (ii) articulate the list of others users with whom they share connection and (iii) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.” From the definition we can infer that social networking sites provide immense freedom to users to showcase themselves and also contact others and discuss with others in both a private and a public mode. The social networking sites can be either backed and financially supported by multipurpose web companies like Google, which besides being a major search engine* also hosts numbers of social networking sites like YouTube, Google+, Orkut, and so on, or created, hosted, and financially supported by web companies whose main aim is to provide an information network and get people connected with each other, like Twitter† or Facebook,‡ which provides a platform not only to interact with people but also to publicize products for profit through it.
