Social networking drives internet behaviour

Link: Social networking drives internet behaviour
Filed under: Yahoo! News, IPTV News, Legal News, Marketing News, Google News, Microsoft News, Search Engine News, Webmaster News, Internet News

SPECIAL REPORT

Social networking online is becoming an increasingly dominant dynamic in internet user behaviour.

Figures released by analyst group ComScore shows that social networking applications, such as MySpace and FaceBook have become some of the most active sites on the internet.

According to their statistics, the busiest websites in April 2006 were:

1. Yahoo!,
2. MySpace.com
3. MSN-Microsoft,
4. Time Warner Network,
5. eBay,
6. Google,
7. FaceBook.com,
8. Viacom Online,
9. Craigslist,
10. Comcast.

MySpace is a social networking portal, that allows users to sign-up and share information with each other.

FaceBook allows people to connect with others nearby by searching on the site.

Already Hitwise reports that MySpace drives as much as 8.2% of all traffic to Google, making it the single biggest provider of traffic to the search engine.

The Washington Post also reports that MySpace already has more internet traffic than Amazon, and is fast catching up on AOL.

Social networking has been a buzz-word of Web 2.0 - provide an interactive social enviroment for users and they will come and give.

But the big heache is monetisation. MySpace may have traffic between Amazon and AOL but certainly isn’t so profitable as either.

Internet resources cost, and at present, that user traffic simply costs.

Additionally, there are other dangers lurking around social networking applications.

For example, YouTube has taken the net by storm to become a major focus for video uploads.

Google Video was hotly tipped to take the online TV search market by storm, but an over-complicated interface and poor user experience means it’s little used in comparison.

YouTube simplifies all of that - but like all content sharing media networks, it has a problem with copyrighted material being uploaded to it.

That means YouTube is bound to already be on the radar of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPIAA), which has already tried to follow as aggressive a policy against copyright violations onlike as the goose-stepping morons of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

The overall results can only mean that You Tube will face legal challenges and associated costs - and all from a Web 2.0 application that - typically - has no real profit model.

And the prevalent use of the sharing of copyrighted material can only remain a threat to social networking applications in general.

In the meantime, Web 2.0 has become a mini dotcom, with plenty of buzz, little in terms of business models, but plenty of expectations.

For the meantime social networking has become a proven source of internet usage. What it is yet to do is prove that this can be safely and responsibly turned in professional revenue models with longevity.