How Social Networking is Changing

Social networking is an ever-changing beast; I’ve said this before, and it will remain true as long as social networking exists. Changing so readily, it can be hard to keep up with how to best make use of social networking. Hell, I remember a time when LiveJournal was the blogging platform of choice and it was weird if anyone other than one of your friends commented on one of your posts.

Image: sxc.hu

Here’s what I’ve observed as far as social networking goes:

• Social networking is getting faster. People don’t have time to write long posts, upload pictures, etc every single day. To keep users active, sites are giving “quick” user options. Think about how popular Twitter has become, and Facebook’s status update tool essentially does the same thing.

• Social networking sites are realizing they should team up. Digg has an ap for Facebook, for example. And you can find many buttons to add to your blog if you want people to bookmark a post. Instead of thinking of one another as competitors, they’re starting to think of one another as tools.

• Social networking sites are branching out to entertainment. To keep you on their sites longer, many social networking sites are incorporating games and other forms of entertainment. They realize that connecting with your friends and peers just isn’t enough and they can make more ad revenue if you’re on their site longer.

• Niche sites as rising in popularity. At one time, niche networking/bookmarking sites didn’t have a chance in hell of becoming popular. While we still don’t see sites rise up in popularity as much as, for example, Reddit or LinkedIn, smaller niche sites that focus on bookmarking in just one topic area are actually starting to thrive.

• You can network from your phone. Social networking sites realize that people like to connect on the go, so they have versions of their sites made especially for Smart Phone users.

Social networking will continue to change, but what I’m noticing most is that social networking sites are just focusing on being as easy as possible. You can’t keep people around if you aren’t super-user friendly.