growth of social networking sites

Facebook, with nine million users, claims to be seventh most trafficked site on the Web. But Net statistics need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Because at the same time, Hi5, with 40 million users, only claims to be the eighth most visited U.S. social network. And MySpace, which has its own internal email system, claims to be the world's fourth most popular English-language website, the sixth most popular website in any language, and to have a 100 million users. But however conservatively you look at it, we are talking of socially networked populations as large as entire countries, big or small. Advertisers love that, but, as with all bright ideas on the Net, success means imitation, and perhaps imitation so good that you could lose your business as instantly as you gained it. Google cottoned to the same idea with Orkut in 2004, an invitation-only site. America Online is getting ready to challenge Facebook and MySpace with its own social networking venture. That success can be ephemeral is illustrated by the experience of Friendster, which went from 20 million visitors/ users in 2003 to less than a million in 2005. And when the traffic shifts so does advertising
It is nothing like the Internet that you know where you blog, search, email, chat and are discovering Internet telephony. MySpace.com has racked in 73 million members in two years, Friendster has 27 million, Orkut has some 18 million and there are millions of others who are raving and ranting about the world in their own space.Is this safe for teenagers and children? Nothing is safe or bad by itself, it is how we use it that matters. All the sites have moderators with western standards of morals, but virtual clubbing is nothing like a chatting or browsing that are difficult to track. If you sense trouble with your teenager or ward, just get him/her to show the thumbnails of pals. If there is a lot of skin or computer doodles, fly right off the handle. On the other hand if the images are normal people, smile, pat and walk away from the computer. You are de-networked.