Social Networks: Challenges and New Opportunities

Social networks are playing an important role in personal as well as corporate environments. However, perceived issues and evolving challenges may hinder further expansion of social networks to meet new opportunities. In this paper, we review inherent concepts and properties of social networks and highlight major analytical evaluation criteria, which are used to identify key findings that reveal degrees of benefits and shortcomings of social networks. We also discuss some proposed solutions related to decentralized social networks in the context of business implications as well as their effects on privacy, identity and trust issues. Future perspectives of social networks are also envisioned in this paper.