A list with some of the social networks websites can be found on wikipedia. There is fair to say that's the current list: some of sites are no longer active, but I am sure that there will be created new ones.
The top social networking websited can be divided into 3 categories: international sites, general purpose and special interest websites with a specific theme. We all know examples from the first two categories: twitter, facebook, myspace and hi5 (and the list can continue with a lot of other examples). For now I am interested about the last category, the websited designed with the social networking intention in mind and having the purpose of being used in schools and libraries. They are creating a community, as do in real life, in the physical schools and library, between students and teachers, peers, parents and some others. The students can always share what they are learning, they can build something online - like projects for school (offline or online), friendships based on common goals. They can also receive feedback from teachers, classmates and parents about their activities.
On daily bases, social network tools give to their users meaningfull ways to use and to improve their reading and writing skills. When dealing through the internet and people from all over the world having a very good reading and writing skills (and a good literacy in general) is a requirement, especially when you want to respect you and to consider your message to them.
By using social networking websites along with the educational environments teens and students have the opportunity to learn better from their teachers through more direct channels: students can post notes, formulas, activities, visuals and comments to each day's lessons. They can get a better and more complete response to their problems and links to details that can not be revealed during the school hours because the lack of time. From this point of view the social networking is a great extension to the schools as we know it, a great way to improve someone's literacy and study in one field or another. Using the internet technology students can process learning and have as result a better understanding of the content of their lessons in class.
Lately, researchers from several universities in the world started in using the social networking websites to post information about their fields of activity and to interact with the public in order to increare their literacy and to promote their activities. For example, researchers at the University of Missouri, US, use Twitter to do so because they consider "it creates a barrier-free environment" that allows their organization "to share important information through real-time exchanges without significant effort" (sciencedaily). Some of their tweets were retweeted by readers that considered that information useful or interesting and reached people that previously had no idea about the subject, reading that improved their literacy. From that point of view a general social networking website were an inexpensive but highly effective communication tool.
