The BOOM in Social Networking

In this age of network or no-work the need for a social network presence is imperative. And just what is a "social network?" Well, if you have to ask that, you have to have been under the nearest rock for the last five (or at least two) years.

Social networks are how the world communicates today. Facebook and MySpace are the new social meeting, greeting, reconnecting, and marketing forums of this techno-world we live in. Facebook, started by a 25-year-old Harvard dropout morphed from its original college campus based demographic to an internet absorbing phenomena that boasts an average of about 550,000 new members a day world-wide (Time, 2009).

And what was the biggest reason for the Facebook BOOM over the last two years?

You guessed it, Baby Boomers! MySpace, a significantly raunchier alternative to Facebook, a social networking website whose headquarters is located in Beverly Hills, California was at one time the most popular social networking site internationally (Wikipedia, 2009).

However, with the more mature 40-something crowd discovering the media and marketing possibilities of these social networks, not to mention connecting with old glory-day buddies, the more grown-up look of Facebook soon pushed the flashy and pimpy aside.

Social networking sites now abound in such a plethora of categories and formats that they are listed by the top 25 for the year. Facebook is number one (of course) with MySpace and Twitter following close behind.

Twitter, now there's another concept entirely. Not only can you post every passing thought that enters your brain, but others can choose to follow your "tweets" as you chirp along. What business executive wouldn't want to peep proudly every fanciful business venture that zaps across his corpus callosum?

WordPress allows Tom, Dick, Harry, Peter, and Paul to all have their own informative blogs on just about whatever subject the fellas can dream up. With Google, Yahoo, and Ning an individual can create an entire little online forum empire. There are also several truly, entirely business oriented networking forums such as linkedin.com and PartnerUp.com.

Social networking is not just limited to personal socialization, marketing, and business. It is becoming a huge and integral part of all forms of education. Online universities are one of the fastest growing internet presences today. Traditional universities are creating online curricula to supplement their in class lecture and in some cases entire courses are being developed for online presentation in lieu of traditional classroom instruction. Moodle and Joomla are just a few examples of interactive online presentation software that have social networking capabilities.

Needless to say, developing an online presence is imperative for any business in the online marketplace today. On a personal level, forums like Facebook and MySpace are actually keeping families connected and reconnecting old friends. People post memorials for loved ones to leave messages and pictures, sometimes it's the only way to talk to your temperamental teenager.