Hitwise also noted that MySpace has seen an increase of 73% year-over-year in average time spent. So while they may be losing a small amount of total social networking traffic to Facebook, MySpace is better engaging the visitors it has retained. Interestingly, competing web metrics firm Compete paints a different picture, suggesting that year-over-year average stay has fallen 9.9%. Differences in how each stat is measured could explain the dissimilar results, however, though they are strikingly different.

• The greatest overlap between OpenSocial container sites exists between Myspace and Hi5, in which 43% of Hi5 users also use Myspace.
• Facebook users are 63% female and 36% male whereas the sites integrated with the OpenSocial platform are 61% female and 38% male.
• 52% of Facebook users are 18-25, whereas 40% of the users are 18-25 for the five container sites on the OpenSocial platform.
• Facebook users tend to use 2.9 major social networking sites on average whereas users of OpenSocial container sites tend to use 2.7 major social networking sites.

Myspace Users
- 11.3 million users identifed in Rapleaf
- 63% female, 36% male
- 20% <18 yrs, 40% 18-25 yrs, 27% 26-35 yrs, 7% 36-45 yrs, 6% >45 yrs
- 2.4 major social networking sites used on average
- 15% are on Facebook, 2% are on LinkedIn, 9% are on Friendster, 6% are on Plaxo, 17% are on Hi5

LinkedIn Users
- 0.8 million users identifed in Rapleaf
- 38% female, 61% male
- 2% <18 yrs, 9% 18-25 yrs, 49% 26-35 yrs, 24% 36-45 yrs, 16% >45 yrs
- 3.2 major social networking sites used on average
- 16% are on Facebook, 25% are on Myspace, 12% are on Friendster, 16% are on Plaxo, 8% are on Hi5

Friendster Users
- 2.3 million users identifed in Rapleaf
- 58% female, 41% male
- 12% <18 yrs, 39% 18-25 yrs, 36% 26-35 yrs, 7% 36-45 yrs, 5% >45 yrs
- 3.0 major social networking sites used on average
- 10% are on Facebook, 44% are on Myspace, 5% are on LinkedIn, 5% are on Plaxo, 26% are on Hi5

Plaxo Users
- 1.3 million users identifed in Rapleaf
- 62% female, 37% male
- 16% <18 yrs, 39% 18-25 yrs, 24% 26-35 yrs, 10% 36-45 yrs, 11% >45 yrs
- 3.6 major social networking sites used on average
- 20% are on Facebook, 53% are on Myspace, 11% are on LinkedIn, 9% are on Friendster, 15% are on Hi5

Hi5 Users
- 4.5 million users identifed in Rapleaf
- 60% female, 39% male
- 21% <18 yrs, 44% 18-25 yrs, 23% 26-35 yrs, 6% 36-45 yrs, 6% >45 yrs
- 2.8 major social networking sites used on average
- 13% are on Facebook, 43% are on Myspace, 2% are on LinkedIn, 13% are on Friendster, 2% are on Plaxo

Ultimately, as Marshall concluded, Cisco saw social networking as a wider trend that will drive a lot of Internet traffic -- over their routers, if they played their cards right. So the push into the social networking space made sense and today Cisco's social strategy comes into focus with Infoworld reporting that Cisco will introduce its Entertainment Operating System (EOS) platform next year.

According to Dan Scheinman, SVP and GM of Cisco's media solutions group, providing richer interactions for fans on social networking sites can benefit the content provider. When users are commenting on rich media, like videos, visits increase three to five fold, which translates to three to five times as many advertising opportunities, he told IDG.

"We've become the only company that can do all of these three things together," Scheinman said, speaking of EOS as a delivery, social networking, and content recommendation platform. EOS will go on sale in 2008.

1. In June, 2 out of every 3 people online visited a social networking site

2. Since January 2004, the number of people visiting or taking part in one of the top online social networks has grown by over 109%

3. Social networking sites are now close to eclipsing traffic to the giants - Google and Yahoo

They liken the growth of SNS to email in the 90's. A couple of charts from Compete:

Given my recent coverage of international markets, it'd be interesting to see how the likes of Bebo fits into this picture - as Bebo recently overtook MySpace as the top SNS in the UK. Compete's stats are US-only, but in any case it's clear that all trends point to SNS sites overtaking the Internet portals - sooner rather than later.

This is further supported by data about what consumers do when mobile social networking. Checking for both comments and messages from their friends register above 50% for mobile social network users and 45% of users post status updates. In other words, they're doing the same sort of things on their phone as they would do if at their computer. The phone is just an extension of their online social networking life, not a separate and different platform for new types of interactions.

The survey, which was conducted 2Q, 2008, interviewed 500 users of online social networks. Out of those users, only 1% had visited a social network on their phone only. A mobile social network, for example, would be phone-only. Yikes. That number is low.

So Where Does This Leave Mobile Social Networks?

At first glance, we have to admit, these numbers don't look promising for mobile social networks. Although it's possible that some of these social networks will stick around thanks to strong and supportive niche audiences, it doesn't look like any today are poised for mainstream success.

Then again, it could just be too soon to tell. Given how long it takes for mainstream users to discover any new technology, it may be just a matter of time before mobile social networking really takes off. With the recent explosion of new touchscreen smart phones (iPhone, Android, , HTC Dream, Instinct, LG Dare, etc.) designed with web surfing in mind, mobile social networking could still be right around the corner.

The sample set for the survey consisted of 1,000 young people suckered into answering questions and viewing ads at the "analyst" company's website, Brandport.com, and 500 Facebook users - for a total of 1500 respondents. Perhaps our headline should then read "Young Facebook Users Think Facebook is #1." The release is here, I found it via Kathleen Mazzocco.

Last year's #1 spot was held by MySpace and presuming the study surveyed 1/3 of its respondents on Facebook then as well, this is a big change. I can say anecdotally that everywhere I look I see laptops (other than mine) on Facebook all the time. You can read our in-depth comparison of MySpace and Facebook here.

Gender Differences

Gender differences in the survey were marked; use of social networking sites was twice as high in self-identified women as it was in men, only 33% of women said they were satisfied to use just one social networking site and MySpace was the #2 favorite for women while falling out of the top 5 for men.

The survey's authors say they believe this shows that the social networking world is set to change drastically when today's youth replace contemporary adults in the workplace. Social networking is currently believed to be much more common among adult men.

1. You ask a query and then receive your search results:

2. You will see an icon in the top-right of search results that says "Meet Others who asked the same query". If you click on the button, you enter into a room (if the room exists) of people who have a) asked the same or similar query; and b) decided to post a message to the room.

3. You can either post a message or contact someone who has already posted a message. To post, you only need to authenticate your email address - there is no other personal info or registration required. You can choose the method you'd like to be contacted: via email (which is masked), or IM (Skype of MSN). So if a user has IM contact enabled, you can start chatting with that person with one click.

There is a voting system too, which together with message age determines how long messages stay in the room for.

Conclusion

Hakia MO kind of resembles Yahoo! Answers, in that you are basically asking a question and then getting feedback from other users. However Hakia points out that MO is not a collaborative search result voting system. They are calling MO a "peer-to-peer transactional platform". Rather than Yahoo! Answers, Hakia says that MO most resembles Craigslist - because "users post content and there are no registration requirements."

In evaluating Hakia HO, I'm in two minds about the usefulness of social networking in a search engine. On one hand, it enables you to join groups of like-minded users in a very specific topic. I'm a big Velvet Underground fan for example, so if I search for "velvet underground" then it might be useful and/or enjoyable for me to join a "room" full of VU fans and begin conversations.

On the other hand, social networking is not something I am usually looking for in a search engine. I use search engines to gather information - in and out. Once I get what I came for, I'm outa there. So, will enough users join topic-focused rooms to make Hakia's MO a compelling feature?

I guess we'll find out, but it's an open question worth seeing the results of. Google would probably be very interested to see if they can integrate social networking into their search homepage, given their new OpenSocial APIs. Although, Hakia says they have a patent application on MO - so maybe Google won't be able to do it anyway!

What do you think: do search and social networking go together? Or should they be kept separate?

Disclosure: Hakia is a sponsor of our network blog AltSearchEngines and recently they signed up as a Read/WriteWeb sponsor for November.

Youth watchers have long argued that for young people, email is how you communicate with elders in formal situations, while social networks and SMS are the preferred method of communication among peers. Nielsen found, however, that Facebook in particular saw greater growth among older people than it did among the young.

Our take away from these findings? People prefer the clean, controlled, multimedia and publicly social experience of social networking communication over the relatively open, individualistic and spammy medium of email. The fact that there is effectively no data portability allowing communication archives to be ported from one social network to another as there is with email doesn't appear to be bothering people in the short term. We wonder if it will in the long term.

For a more in-depth look at this phenomenon, check out Danah Boyd's latest analysis titled "Social Media is Here to Stay - Now What?."

Today on GigaOm, Om Malik reports on some of the new numbers coming in for social networks here in the U.S., specifically new comScore data which shows that the two biggest networks - MySpace and Facebook - are beginning to plateau in their growth.

Additionally, he points to an eMarketer article where they've lowered their 2008 advertising estimates from $1.6 billion to $1.43 billion. By looking at these numbers, Malik concludes that social networking is in for "tough times going forward." But is that really the case?

Social Networking Taking Off?

On the flip side, a completely different, and more positive, report on social networking was also released today. The report is called "The Consumer Internet Barometer" and is produced by The Conference Board, a global business research and membership organization, and TNS, a world leader in market insight and information who surveys 10,000 households across the country and tracks who's doing what on the Internet.

Interestingly, their report doesn't mention a decline or plateau at all. Instead, it concludes that what was once only a niche activity is now a growing trend that has more people joining every day. According to the report, one out of every four people visit social networking sites, and half of those that do, do so on a daily basis. The trend is so prevalent, says Lynn Franco, Director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center, that it's going to extend beyond just personal use. "The next growth wave will be expanding and incorporating these networks into our business lives," she claims.

While this report doesn't look at traffic stats and advertising projections, it is looking at market penetration, and in doing so, paints a much rosier picture than the worrisome plateau in the chart above.

What It All Means

Perhaps social networking is reaching a saturation point as it matures, but that's not to say that it's all doom-and-gloom. Many people are still joining social networks, and, with each new generation, social networking will become even more of a part of life than it was for the generation prior. Whether MySpace and Facebook will always be the hot properties that they are today is yet to be seen, but the rise of new sites like Twitter, for example, shows that there's still potential for new social networks to rise up and gain mainstream appeal.

If anything, the sheer number of users on these networks today prove that social networking has earned its place in today's mix of new media. Don Ryan, Vice President, Technology and Media, TNS, agrees, saying, "as social networking becomes a staple in people's media experience, brands will place it alongside print, TV and search as a main advertising vehicle." Hmmm..maybe a saturation point isn't really such a bad thing after all?

Mobile social networking is defined by M:Metrics as "the ability to connect to these communities with a mobile phone, allowing people to access profiles and share content while they’re on the go."

Mobile MySpace, pic by Stan

Interesting to note that content distribution with mobile operator portals is key. M:Metrics found that the top three U.S. mobile social networking sites had strong distribution - MySpace appeared in Amp’d, AT&T, Helio and Nextel. Facebook was accessible on Sprint, AT&T, Virgin and Amp’d; YouTube on Verizon (also iPhone, which wasn't measured in this survey). In the UK, MySpace has distribution on Vodafone, Bebo on 3. Only U.K. number 2 MSN Live Spaces is not offered on a mobile operator portal.

Here is the breakdown of content and apps for U.S., which seems traditional and not much to do with social networking sites (texting, ringtones, etc). It'd be interesting to check back in 6 months or so and see what impact iPhone and similar web-friendly mobile devices have on this - will we see more social networking functionality in the stats then?

Facebook Mobile pic by random0

The Debate

On the pro side, Greg Fish argued that social networking profiles aren't resumes and companies should not use them when determining if an applicant should be hired. "A public profile is a vehicle for casually interacting with others in an informal setting, on personal free time," he wrote. "When companies use these profiles to find not only a professional but also an ideological match for a job, they’re misleading themselves and building ill will with talented prospective employees, who might decline to apply for a job for fear a comment about China on their blogs makes them persona non grata."

Fish's arguement hinged on the premise that by utilizing social networking profiles in the hiring process, employees were opening themselves up to potential discrimination lawsuits, and worse may be doing so on the premise of false information.

On the con side, Timothy Lee said that there were plenty of legitimate reasons for employers to look at social networking profiles of prospective hires. "Employees in sales, public relations, and customer service function as representatives for the companies they work for, so employers have a legitimate interest in ensuring potential workers won’t embarrass the company," he wrote.

According to Lee, people shouldn't fear that an employer will get a hold of their social networking profile, but instead they should expect it and use it to their advantage. By using your social networking profile and other bits of your online persona as an "extended resume," workers can "demonstrate passion and depth of knowledge for his or her area of expertise."

But Do We Actually Control Our Own Profiles?

Both Fish and Lee make compelling points. Certainly social networking profiles and other stuff you put online is public, and you should expect that anyone might see it. Carefully crafting your public online image to emphasize your best qualities is a good idea -- treat how you behave online the same as how you'd behave in any other public place.

But at the same time, the way many social networking sites are set up, we don't necessarily control all the information we put out there. It's true that you probably shouldn't be posting party photos from your college days on Facebook while you're applying for a job as an elementary school teacher, but do you friends know that? What if they tag you in those photos? You can remove the tags -- but only if you're a member of Facebook. Is it reasonable to expect people to actively maintain profiles on every popular social network or photo and video sharing site just to keep on top of photos that your college buddies might post?

The bottom line is that employers can, will, and probably should look at social networking profiles and other online information sources when making hiring decisions. But they should also take the information they find there with a large helping of salt and keep in mind that the Internet is not necessarily the most accurate representation of that real world.

Still Limited

While we have little doubt that mobile social networking will become a big market in the future, today's reality is still rather bleak. Because of the limitations in the current hardware and software implementations, a lot of the location-based social networks like Loopt, WhosHere, Pelago's Whrrl, and others feel limited and at times rather gimmicky.

Also, most of these networks simply suffer from the fact that they don't have many users and that the chances of finding any of your friends on them are relatively low for now.

What About the Established Networks?

In the near future, mobile social networking is only really going to grow once the big social networks like Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, LinkedIn, or MyYearBook start releasing location-aware applications for mobile devices.

Overall, we don't put too much stock into the ABI report. Thanks to highly targeted location-based advertising, there is a good chance that a mobile social network that manages to attract enough users (or any of the already establish social networks that releases a location aware application) will be able to be financially successful. For right now, however, with a market that is barely establish, trying to put a number on the potential success of these networks is almost silly.

You can choose the amount of personal information you want to display in your profile and Microsoft gives you very granular control over what parts of your profile you want to share with others. You can, for example, choose to share your last name and location only with friends, but make information about your relationship status and hometown public. You can also choose to make some items only available to a small sub-set of your friends.

Favorites

Live Profiles also allows you to create an annotated list of favorite books, movies, and music. One of the nice features here is that Microsoft matches your text entry with images from its Zune catalog or Amazon's book store, and links to both stores directly, which gives this feature more depth than just a simple list of favorite things in Facebook or other social networking sites.

A Little Bit of Facebook, Twitter, and FriendFeed

Overall, it seems that Live Profiles and the new Windows Live Homepage will tie Microsoft's Live Services together into a very comprehensive social network. While it doesn't have widgets that let you poke your friends, it does have a broad set of applications like Photos,Spaces, Contacts, Groups, Calendar, and Events that can all be integrated into your Live Profile. You can also post Twitter-like messages (Microsoft calls them 'notes') to your profile that will then appear in your friends' accounts as well.

While Microsoft isn't directly marketing it as such, Windows Live is, in reality a formidable challenge to other social networks.

Some of the study's findings echo things we've already heard. For example, Facebook users tend to be old, white, and rich. MySpace users are young...and fleeing. Other info is new: Twitterers are more likely to have a part-time job, LinkedIn users like to exercise and own more gadgets.

Of course, not everyone is devoted to one social network alone. The study found that there is some overlap between sites, as shown in the chart below.

Social Networkers, in General

Out of the 110 million Americans (or 60% of the online population) who use social networks, the average social networking user logs on to these sites quite a bit. They go to social networking sites 5 days per week and check in 4 times a day for a total of an hour per day. Nine percent of that group stay logged in all day long and are "constantly checking what's new."

Interacting with Brands

When it comes to brands online, the study found that:

• 52% of social networkers had friended or become a fan of at least one brand,
• 17% felt positive when seeing a brand on a social network,
• 19% felt negative when seeing a brand on a social network,
• 64% were neutral or didn't care about brands on social networks,
• 20% would like to see more communication from brands online,
• 35% would not like to see more communication,
• 45% were neutral or didn't care.

Social Networking Myths Shot Down

A couple of interesting things that came out of the study included the debunking of some social networking myths. Social networkers are not as interested in friending strangers or creating "fake" friends to boost their ego. Out of the group, 45% connect only to family and friends and another 18% will connect only to people they've met in person. In other words, two-thirds are connecting to people they actually know. Only 10% of those surveyed said they will friend anyone.

Also interesting is that only 15% of social networkers say they log on at work, thus debunking another myth about how prevalent social network use is at the workplace.

Non-Social Networkers

The study revealed the reasons why some online users aren't into social networks. Surprisingly, it's not because they hate technology - they spent just as much time on the web as the networkers do. Instead, they don't use social media because either they don't have the time, they don't think it's secure, or they think it's stupid. Yet even out of the time-starved group, 22% report they'll start using social media in 3 months and 27% said they'll start using it in a year.

Continue to Part 2 for details on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Google SNS integration

The founders of Dodgeball and Orkut met recently in a Google cafe ;-)

Earlier this week I analyzed the potential for Google properties Orkut (a social networking system) and Dodgeball (a mobile sns) to merge. I noted the following trends to back up my argument: SNS + Mobile; meta-SNS + Mobile; Co-mingling of data between SNS; similar demographics between Orkut and Dodgeball.

Most commenters though had a differing view. Hashim's comment summed up the general feeling:

"Don't get excited about anything Googe does in the social area. Orkut is clumsy, and Dodgeball has been stagnant. A merge of the two probably won't be much to talk about."

However given Google's current focus on integrating their products, who knows... ;-)

Social Networking Silver Bullets

This week we really delved into the future of Social Networking. Ebrahim Ezzy wrote an in-depth post entitled Social Networking: Time For A Silver Bullet. Ebrahim argued that the current state of thousands of 'walled garden' social networks can't continue - we need meta social networks to connect up niche SNS. According to the poll we ran at the end of the post, 69% of you agree. 

Alex Iskold followed up with Multiply: A Different Approach To Social Networking. Alex explained that in Multiply, the focus is on how individuals consume information in the social network.

On a similar theme, I did a post about how del.icio.us is turning into a social network - based on an interview I did with founder Joshua Schachter. Joshua took exception to the title I used, noting that "saving links has always been and will continue to be the focus and primary value of the system." Nevertheless, social networking functionality is going to be added to del.icio.us in future - which to my mind will make it an SNS, akin perhaps to Imeem.

Interviews!

There were plenty of in-depth interviews on R/WW this week: blueorganizer, eSnips, HeyLetsGo, and Neil Rimer from Index Ventures. 

The state of web development

Our post on a new report entitled The State Of Web Development resulted in some interesting comments. I'd highlighted the report's prediction that Ajax usage by web developers will surpass Flash in 2007, however several commenters noted that Ajax/Flash hybrid use is more likely. As Tom (comment 11) said: "Using the best of both these technologies is most likely the way web development is headed in the next couple of years."

OK, roll on the new week!