Web is becoming THE PLACE for social networking

I was listening the NPR's All Things Considered program as Michele NOrris talked with Spencer Reiss, a contributing editor at Wired Magazine. They were talking about Rupert Murdoch the owner of MySpace.com. Currently, MySpace is the most visited website in the US. This outranks Yahoo and Google hits.

For those who are not familiar with MySpace, it is the place where people can share music, photos, gossip, personal info with friends and family. It started as a young person's hangout place like the mall or 7-11 parking lot. It has now added an older audience of 20 to 30 somethings. Now various marketing groups are looking to use MySpace as a marketing tool.

According to Reiss 250,000 people sign-up on MySpace A DAY. I believe the quoted a figure of 90 million people who have become a part of MySpace. There are many marketing techniques to measure successful or popular products over the years but all agree that word-of-mouth is the most effective. The problem is, measuring how effective word-of-mouth is has eluded the marketplace. Now they have a great tool to study how word-of-mouth works.

There are some other great web sites that illustrate social networking.
Flickr - a photo sharing web iste
Del.icio.us - a bookmarks manager that can be shared with friends

One I happened upon yesterday is called 43 Things - it is a website that asks what you want to do with your life. And there seem to be a lot of ambitious people out there who want to share that knowledge.

Check them out and look around for other examples of social networking websites. Post them and your comments about them in my comment section. Tell me what you think makes them interesting from a social networking aspect.