Why Social Networking is Here to Stay

With the unbelievable boom over the past year, online social networking has received a lot of doubtful criticisms among the media. Yes, some social networks may be just a fad and yes, there will be a fair amount that will fail. But let me make one statement clear:

Online social networking is here to stay.

In fact, I will go as far to say that I believe at one point in the future, a person’s entire internet experience will have some underlying social network influencing it. My belief can be explained in two reasons:

1. Everything (and I mean everything) on the internet is more relevant and interesting when your network of friends, family, and contacts are applied.

Shopping, searching, business, photos, video, music, sports, and anything humans do on the internet can be positively influenced by social networking online in ways that can’t be done (easily) offline. The problem then becomes unifying all of these interests so that a user doesn’t have to belong to 4 or 5 different social networks to fill their needs.

2. Humans have an underlying NEED and WANT to communicate with others.

It is human nature to want to communicate with others who are within your social circle or have similar interests as you. Social Networking is another way to communicate with others, not only for a definitive period of time (i.e. when a phone call ends, your communication ends), but 24/7. Through your profile on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIN, or any other social network, you are communicating anytime someone looks at it.

In addition, social networks provide a way to informally communicate with others that you otherwise usually wouldn’t. For example, how about that friend from high school you haven’t talked to in 6 years? On their birthday are you more likely to call them, or post a Happy B-Day message on their Facebook wall?

This informal way of communicating also helps foster relationships with people you wouldn’t otherwise. Every night of the week college students come home from a party to become Facebook or MySpace friends with those they just met. They might send messages back and forth or “poke” each other until they reach the level of comfort to make that coveted phone call.

To all the skeptics of social networking out there, get over it. Social networking is here to stay whether you like they hype or not. With that being said, there will be plenty of social networks that will disappear over the next year. But it isn’t because they are just social networks, it is because they either:

1. Don’t understand how to apply social networking in a useful way.
2. Don’t offer anything unique over the 10 other social networks that just launched in the past hour. “If you build it, they will come,” mentality is the death mark of so many social networks.

[tags]Social Networking, Social Network, Brian Balfour, MySpace, Facebook[/tags]