Social Networking – An Evolved For of Communication

Social Networking isn't just for making online friends anymore, but has become a powerful business tool. Social Networking is a top way to reach beyond your geographic boundaries and gain customers from all over the world. Over 150 million people over this planet visit social networking sites every day and is still gaining popularity. It is no longer being used just to share pictures, video, audio and music or playing games.

For business Social Networking is just an evolved form of communication, but importantly, it is a repeatable undifferentiated construct with a low barrier to entry. This means we can expect increased competition, market segmentation and the effect of a fickle consumer base very willing to switch over to whatever site is new and interesting simply because it is so easy to do so.

Social Networking is becoming the de facto communication method of choice for more and more people. It is addictive, media-rich, focuses on messaging and it has potential for content distribution, all of which make social networking a natural fit for mobile space.

This aspect of internet use is having a profound effect on who the users are. Social Networking is liberating. It gives you an opportunity to connect with friends and other like-minded people and to find your own voice online.

Social Networking is not about showing off it is about community. As in all communities you will have leaders that provide the most benefit to the members but when leaders try to develop a community around themselves it is doomed to fail.

Friends... the people who make you come back for more. This is another kind of addiction, too. Friend Feed, for one, lets them do this. The aggregator streams everything users do on all their networks across every site so that it can be viewed from one central location.

OpenID is also great for me as a customer. If I want to change my password for all fifteen of my social networking sites, I simply change my password once with my OpenID provider and it is reflected across all those sites. OpenID is well on the way to being the de facto standard for identifying yourself across the Internet. With that said, people are really starting to look hard at the next things we can do now that we know who everyone is.

Plazes are becoming the next thing to add to your social presence and time based activity planning features. Plazes adds the elements of "place" and "time" to social networking through features that allow people to alert friends of their activity and location; review their own and others past activities; share their experiences and make plans with friends, who are then able to respond with comments and suggestions as well as their own location information.

Talking and Seeing your friends on whatever Social Network you are on, even skype or VoIP is now coming available as a new widget to add to all your social networking sites. You can now unify all your social networking platforms no matter which ones they are.

So as you can see Social Networking isn't just for making online friends anymore, but has become a powerful business tool with all the gadgets and widgets needed to help make your business successful.