SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE -- Oct 23 -- There's now a social network site for practically every subgroup. aSmallWorld.net is an invitation-only site for jetsetters. Dogster.com caters to dog owners. LinkedIn.com serves professionals. Friendster has about 19 million users. MySpace.com now boasts 33 million users. Facebook.comhas grown to 8.3 million users and is the 11th most visited site on the
Internet. Among other things, each site is a treasure trove of
consumer data. In May 2005, the Accel group, a Silicon Valley venture
capitalist firm, bought a $12.2 million chunk of Facebook, which is
currently valued at around $100 million. This month, Yahoo purchased
Upcoming, a site that lets people publicly list and share their
schedules of events with friends. In May 2005 Google bought Dodgeball;
a site that brings social networking to mobile phones. 'Online
social networking is in its infancy. There's a huge opportunity for
players like Microsoft or Yahoo or Google to layer social networking
applications on top of existing features, like utilizing existing buddy
lists or saving e-mail addresses and connecting them to profiles.
'Social scientists ascribe the appeal of social networking sites to
what they call "low cost." Rather than engage in long conversations to
determine someone's favorite movie, for example, Facebook users can
just glance at a profile and get a sense of the interests of the person
living next door. But lots of low-cost friendships might mean lots of
lower quality friendships. FULL ARTICLE @ SF GATE

Mark Brooks:
Some social networks will morph into or be created as Personal
Information Management systems to complement the likes of Outlook (or
CRM, in the case of LinkedIn) to allow people to orgnise their networks
of friends more easily. Many social networks spur on the
'connectors' to connect with as many people as possible, turning their
networks into popularity contests. This creates a low focus, low
integrity network. Facebook is the best example of a high
integrity, high utility social network; they masterfully limited
connections to a core group of students/alumni. This will ensure
their success well into the future...and give classmates a run for their money. Social networking is indeed still in it's infancy.