Why Social Networking Sites are Becoming Popular

Social Network Growth

Social networks were around in the 1990s, but the social networking boom has really happened in the 2000s. It is difficult to quantify how many people are involved in social networking across all the different sites, but some estimates say that two thirds of all web users will visit a social networking site at least once a month.

Facebook, for example, had 34.7 million visitors in December 2007 alone, which is 81 percent more visitors than in had in December 2006. And MySpace has even more visitors and is clearly the dominant social networking site right now.

More and more people sign up on social networking sites every day. Back in early 2007 there were already 200 million people signed up on MySpace. While clearly not everyone who has an account uses the social networking site on a daily basis, it's also clear that there are a lot of people using social networking to its full advantage.

Why Social Networking Sites are Becoming Popular

One of the big reasons why social networking sites are becoming popular is because of the multitude of things people can do on social networking sites. Here are just a few of the things you can do:

Reconnect with Old Friends

If you're looking for people you haven't seen in a long time or people you went to school with, it is easy to find them on social networking sites. Many sites categorize people by their hometown, where they went to school and the different places they have worked, so you can browse through the people who went to your school or search for the name of someone you are looking for.

You can also use a social networking site to keep in touch with family members who live far away, plan reunions and share pictures without clogging up your e-mail account.

Make New Friends

Because a social network connects you to the friends of your friends, you can see and contact people in your friends' circles who you don't already know. This gives you the ability to connect with people you might not have otherwise met.

You can also use social networking sites to find people to date. Back in the days when Facebook was just for college students, many people used it as a dating service to find people on their campus who they might not have bumped into otherwise (you can still do this with the site, but membership is now open).

Find Business Partners

Because the social networking sites link people with similar interests, you can use a site (and the same process of meeting people through your friends and their friends) to find business partners or people who are working in a business that is similar to yours who might want to do a joint venture with you.

Some social networking sites are also great for getting publicity for your business because you can write about what's going on in your business for all the world to see. You can even set up your book or music group as its own entity on a social networking site so that it can have "friends" who then get all the updates about your events.

Have Fun

The social networking sites aren't just about hooking up with people. They also let people share videos, pictures, quizzes and develop online games and applications. Facebook is probably the most well known for allowing users to develop their own applications and share them over the network.

These games and other options can be a lot of fun, but they can also drain time, which can be good or bad depending on what your goal in using the social networking site is in the first place.