Determining Dimensions of Social Websites: Insights through Genre Theory

This paper considers an analysis of the dimensions of social websites as an important communication and collaboration tool for individual users and communities. Social websites may be referred to as social network sites and social media sites which reflect technology, user, content and linguistic issues for ´social´ interaction. They have clearly achieved widespread adoption as a new means of communication in a very short time around the globe. Genre Theory is applied to classify extant literature on social websites to reflect their growing importance, the reasons for their adoption, the content shared, the mode of use and the language for communication. This paper therefore provides an elaborate consideration of user as well as numerous emerging research issues on the implications of this new media.