The service that I chose to join is Yelp which is a website that serves various local communities through user reviews and providing local establishment information such as restaurants, salons etc.
Setting up a Yelp account is fairly easy and similar to other social networking. You have a user name and a profile to represent yourself and you have the option to post any picture for your avatar. Every time you participate in any activity such as reviewing, commenting, posting or uploading anything, it is linked to your profile. User interaction in this site is not "live". By that I mean, you can post a comment and you are not necessarily in a conversation or in communication with someone at the same time. Someone might reply in a couple of hours or days after you put up a post or a review. Goals of the Yelp user is to express their views on various establishments as well as to gather opinions and reviews from their fellow Yelpers. Interaction here is more like a forum format unlike Facebook and other sites where you have some kind of "wall" or comment section where it displays what other people have to say to you. The forums are more random and can be from people who are not your friends but you all have a common topic which attracts you together. On your home page, messages are not displayed but instead, it shows a history of all your activity such as the reviews you have written and things that you have participated in. In return for your reviews, you might receive compliments (little icons that say "you're cool! or you're funny!"), gain fans and friends, receive messages and you can do vice versa to other people in the site as well.
Social objects and verbs:
the "compliment" icons--- send a compliment through little icons
"invite your friends" button-----gather your friends to an event or get them to sign up
the "like" button-----show your approval
"send to friend" button-----share something to your friend by linking it to them
"follow this reviewer"-----keep track of your favorite reviewers
"start a new conversation" button in the Talk section-----initiate communication/topic in a forum environment
To be successful, you are ranked by the quantity and quality of your reviews, number of friends, fans and compliments. Your popularity and activeness in the network defines your ranking. The more you have, the higher your status. And when you achieved a popular status with a lot of activities under your belt, you get the Yelp Elite status (represented by an icon on your profile). To achieve this status here is what the Yelp site describes as an Elite member:
http://www.yelp.com/elite
Social networking in Yelp is just like socializing in the real world where the more you are involved and do quality activities and are very social with others, you achieve the popularity status. People will come to you for your opinions and advice, follow you, invite you and build relationships that might carry on outside the "social network" to face-to-face in person. For you, you get to reach and meet as many people as you want, say a lot of things, express yourself and your opinions about other things, join and be a part of various events, groups etc.
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