People are calling the drop in members for these networking sites, particularly with facebook as “facebook fatigue”. There are a number of reasons:

1. Security concerns
2. Amount of personal data people put on the site
3. Employers have banned staff from accessing the site at work.
4. Too much information when they log onto facebook.
5. Trivial information from their contacts
6. No longer niche

Facebook was originally niche – it targeted people based on membership of organisations – the universities. It was for the early adopters. However, now it is mass market and has lost its excitement. There have even been campaigns to get rid of friends. At the end of 2008 Burger King’s Whopper Sacrifice campaign asked users to sacrifice 10 friends on facebook in exchange for a free Whopper. Facebook soon caught onto this and cut short their campaign when By January this year 60,000 users deleted their friends for free burgers

So what is the future of these social networking sites?

The future is in niche online communities. These will be based on interests or lifestyles eg diamondlounge.com, solving problems or self help eg netmums.com. These network sites will be aimed towards business user needs to keep in touch with colleagues and contacts. The innovators and early adopters will be the first ones to take part in these niche online communities. They want to be part of something that no one else is. People like the exclusiveness and the feeling they belong. This will always far outweigh those networks where everyone and anybody can join.

(source:http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/feb/22/facebook.facebook?gusrc=rss&feed=global).

Social networking sites can drive seo traffic to your site. People can share links talk about the site with their friends and family. They can also talk about your site on their own blogs.With twitter they can easily follow your site. What is social networking you might ask? Well it is is the grouping of individuals into specific groups. It is like having your own little community but on line.

Most people use these social networking sites to:

Communicate with people in their extended social network
Stay in touch with people they already know (support pre-existing relationships)
Research suggests that most SNSs primarily support pre-existing social relations
Facebook is used to maintain existing offline relationships or solidify offline connections
All have common offline element – eg went to school together
Not used to meet new people
Facebook users search for people with whom they have an offline connection
Don’t tend to browse to meet complete strangers
91% of U.S. teens who use SNSs do so to connect with friends

Social networks are growing in populartity and the social networking sites took over email in global reach at 68.4% in Feb 09. The reach is highest in Brazil (80%) but fastest growing in Germany (from 39% – 51% in one year). Facebook popular in UK and USA. According to facebook there are more than 30 million active users, not bad for a company that was originally set up for Harvard College students. However, Mixi is the leader in Japan, Orkut in Brazil, Stayfriends, Wer-kent-wen and StudiVZ top 3 social networking sites Germany. Twitter gaining popularity, grew 131% between Feb and March 09 to 9.3 million US users.

Well they are an internet based service that allows users to create profiles about themselves and interact with other people on the site. In short, they are a way to communicate with friends and family on line. You can post photos and videos of and share them.

One of the most popular sites for University students and those in full time employment is facebook.  Since infiltrating the UK market in February 2007, it has grown to over 175 million active users. MySpace users are a younger profile, mostly aged from 14 to 18 years old who are still at school or college. MySpace has been used by many people in the music industry to promote themselves, Lily Allen found fame through MySpace.  She now uses another social networking site as well called Twitter.  Many celebrities are using this site which is third position behind MySpace and facebook.  Users can update their own blog with “tweets” , posts of up to 140 characters and you can subscribe to be part of their updates.

You don’t need to put all your information on these social networking sites as this can lead to identity theft.  It is recommended to set your profile to private so that only your friends who you know can see your photos.  And be careful when updating your profile, don’t do it during work hours especially with comments such as “I am bored” or “I have such a bad hangover”.   Your boss could be reading this and decide to show you the door. Be careful when changing your relationship status as these appear on the home page feed of facebook and people may be rushing round to congratulate or commiserate you.

The best thing about SNSs is to have fun, share photos and videos and don’t take it too seriously.