The company purchased Cymphony in 2007, a CGM metrics tools and monitoring startup that had weak knees under from the git go. They have made numerous noises since the acquisition to fluff the case for contracting their reputation and brand monitoring services based on that ill-fated buy.

From a user's growth perspective, I think broader social networking fatigue may be beginning to show a little bit for the first time (geeks like us have already gone through it numerous times before.) Yet another reason why I'm finally warming up to the idea of an Open Social platform.

I totally agree here. I believe that Social Networking is going to decline over time. This is based on a fact that Social Networking offers zero value to users. Sure users (suckers) might feel important or feel cool to connect up with their friends (suckers), which is totally unnecessary via a social network which they can brag about to their parents or their other sane friends who haven't joined them yet.

The winner in social networkings are the marketers and the losers (suckers, naive, etc,...) are the users/members of those sites. It gives marketers something useful that could be translated into monetary gain, while suckers are not aware (perhaps not fully) that their being member of such a site alone (which lead to an unproductive use of their time) someone (marketers) is exploiting their naivety for a maximum gain. What users gain? Nothing really. Just perhaps gain an exaggerated sense of self-importance, which is equivalent to completely useless.

Facebook or other social networking sites are not like productive tools as Google. If there is no Google (or similar services), my productivity, will drop to about 10%. My life and millions of others solely depended on Google's services in order to be very productive. I search research papers on Google in minutes, which prior to that, I used to go to my local University's library and sit for half-a-day (sometimes 3 times a week), going thru book shelves and try to scan each journal/book and every article to find out which one that is relevant to my work in software development.

See, this is a fact that I will be always hooked to Google type services because I can't live without it. On the other hand, social networking sites, no one is dependent on it for their economic/productive survival. If they disappear today, no one is going to suffer because they're useless, except perhaps the marketers themselves would be the losers.

Social networking is one of those passing fad, and this fact is linked directly to human psyche. We explore things that looks cool, irrelevant if they're useful or not. When the next thing comes, we move on. But we get stuck with things that give us productivity in our daily life, ala Google and the likes. Tools or things that has zero value for productivity such as Facebook, will disappear as soon the new fad arrives. This is how the brain works and people are unaware of this fact, since it is buried deep in our subconscious mind however it manifests itself in human herding behavior, ie, the crowd move with the current perceived direction. When the old way (previous direction) is dished, then crowd find a new direction and all herd that way.

The faster social networking sites disappear from the face of the earth, the better. Humanity & civilization can finally reclaim its sanity.

It's a good way for bored people though. I know of friends who spend hours every week checking out new profiles and trying to get hooked up with people.

The big question however, is - will advertisers pay for such losers? Advertising gets paid off when people who are looking for stuff that they sell, connect. If you're increasing on the "marketeer" or "surfer" category, then getting real people - you're falling into a death trap.

Just food for thought.

Just by observing what is happening with my myspace friends I can tell that it will soon take a nose dive as far as use as a social network.

Fortunately for social networks, apps will keep them afloat until the next big thing comes by.

The collective population of internet users is like a little baby, one day they may have a favorite rattle, 2 weeks later they may forget about it and go on to something else, never to play with the rattle again.

And with the wave of startups and small businesses jumping on the boat, we'll probably see the numbers steadily climb again all around.

But once someone has started in on Facebook, they'll soon start looking around for other venues that offer the same ability to connect, but that have a far better infrastructure for interaction. At that point, sites like Multiply.com are going to take off (something that's already beginning to happen, in fact).

The sites that are going to still be standing after a Social Networking shakedown are those that are easy to use, are customizable, have a lot of offer (for both grandma's and teens alike as well as everyone in between), and have superb privacy controls. Neither Myspace nor Facebook qualify. But there are other social networks that do. And it's just a matter of time before the herds start migrating en masse to these more functional sites.

Interest in our UK-based business lead and referral network at http://www.wecando.biz is increasing massively as word gets out there. We already have people importing their business contacts from other sites -- and the biggest social graph anyone has, which is their e-mail address book.

There is lots of life in social networking, especially as it becomes more useful to solving specific needs.