The most popular e-tool used for communication is social networking. Social networks have experienced an evolutionary process - in the beginning was like-minded grouping, news exchange by mean of e-mail. Later on developed social networks, that became a tool for e-business. Objective of the paper: to describe and evaluate social networks’ phenomena, to describe the reason and justification of its occurrence from marketing theory point of view, to describe the place and importance of social portals in e-marketing and main problems that social network creators and users face. What contains knowledge about the social portals and what kind of opportunities this resource offers; who are the clients and how to increase their quantity? What are the business benefits of using this kind of portals in the market? The author analyzes the impact of social portals on various activities of enterprises - changes in marketing, sales, business planning under the influence of social portals, risks that are associated with social portal usage. Prospects for the development of relations between businesses and their customers in the context of social portals. Research methodology: the authors employ well-established quantitative and qualitative methods of research: grouping, analysis, statistic method, etc. The theoretical and methodological background of the research is formed by, scientific researches and publications, publications from mass media and professional literature; statistical information from legal institutions as well as information collected by the author during the survey. Findings: research result shows that social networks may be classified based on different factors. Depending on company’s aims and specifics different social networks can be used for maintaining different procceses. Conclusions: electronic social networks are the major tool for entrepreneurs in the electronic environment. Wise usage of the opportunities that the entrepreneur can extract from operations in social networks, may significantly improve the competitiveness of the company - sales channel and market scope expansion, sales increase, new product development, testing and bringing to the market or improving the existing product portfolio, target audience analysis and segmentation, various marketing activities maintenance, e-commerce development, etc. At present time in Latvia, even considering that Internet in Latvian entrepreneurship is widely used during long time, active e-marketing employment and social networking in e-environment is at inception point. This observation is especially characteristic to Latvian micro and small enterprises.