Social Networking Losing Appeal?

According to new reports, users have dropped slightly for many of the top social networking sites, including MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo.

While analysts note that a single month of decline does not spell "the end" of any site or social networking, in general, it is the first decline since 2006, when data started being compiled on these sites.

I have said many times before, on this very blog in fact, that social networking was going to even-out. The same is true of the big blog-boom of the past year or two. The WWW is a hotbed of fads and buzzwords and if you are serious about working it, you have to be somewhat guarded in your approach to these things. While social networking is a viable and integral part of the WWW, it - like everything else - "blew-up" into some big craze simply because a bunch of pencil-necked geeks, celebrities, and general casual-users started "buzzing" about it.

Social networking has always been an element of the WWW: chatrooms, message boards, website forums - it goes all the way back to the Web's infancy (FidoNet); there is nothing new or revolutionary about social networking and anyone who knows anything about the WWW knows that. Developing sites specifically for social networking is not exactly a radical idea either, but the buzz that developed around them certainly made it seem that way to many.

Social networking isn't going anywhere, but the whole "social networking revolution" is.

Now, if only the "new blogging craze" would go away!

© C Harris Lynn, 2008