The present invention provides a social networking system and method by which customized tags can be created by a registered user in an online social networking environment and distributed to facilitate social networking. The tags represent personal characteristics and preferences associated with users of the online social networking environment. A graphical user interface (GUI) is provided in the online social networking website that enables a specific user to create and customize tags. Tags can be embeddable in that a user can insert the tag in a website GUI for display. Also, tags may have embedded content, e.g. a photo, a song, a profile page location, etc and may be sponsored or traded in the social networking website. Also a skin that shows the personal profile page GUI style may be customized, sponsored, or traded.