Social Networks and Their Potential for E-learning

Social networks play an important role in present life. They are a very widespread form of communication and a fast source of information nowadays. They connect people who share interests and activities across political, economic, and geo-graphic borders. They are places where people create their own space or home page where they write blogs, post pictures, videos and music, share ideas and link to the other persons. Therefore, the purpose of this article is firstly to de-scribe the concept of social network and their specific characteristics. Secondly, the authors of this article list the most widespread social networks both world-wide and in the Czech Republic, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or Google+, and discuss their benefits for learning. And thirdly, with the help of an empirical survey, the authors attempt to answer the question whether there is any interest among social network users, in this case among the Czech users, in exploiting social networks for study purposes.