A comparative study of Usability and Sociability Of public and specialized soci al networking websites

The aim of this paper is to compare the internal and international specialized and public social networks in order to identify their centralized and common issues, weaknesses and strengths of each selected social network, and propose the efficient solutions to improve and expand the social networks in Iran based on the “usability” and “sociability” factors of social network. The Research Method is conducted based on the library and evaluative studies. In this regard, the study sample includes six foreign public networks with a local network and six specialized international networks with three internal networks. NICI model is used to compare the selected social networks based on the four ‘Navigation’, ‘Interactivity’, ‘Source credibility’, and ‘Intelligence’ criteria to analyze the structure of the social networks and assessment of their usability and sociability. In this regard, 33 main indexes for these criteria were examined and the result shows that Facebook, Myspace, and Cloob networks have the highest level of compatibility with the criteria among the selected public networks. Whereas, three Good reads, HR, and Linked in networks have the highest level of compatibility among the selected specialized social networks. Finally, according to the conducted comparison and analyzes concerning with the common, strengths and weaknesses issues of each network, efficient solutions are proposed to improve the status of social networking in Iran.