When social networking dropped on the Internet, Web browsers fell all over each other getting an account registered so they could build their list of friends and tag clouds. Some social networking sites, like MySpace.com and Facebook, became the darlings of the younger Web browsers and literally changed the face of the Internet.

YouTube blew them all out of the water with thousands of videos on any subject uploaded by the site’s users and viewed in staggering numbers. Marketers and teenagers weren’t the only ones watching this upstart on the Web. Google bought it from the three guys who created it a couple of years back for $1.65 billion dollars. How’s that for a conversion rate?

If you search for the “Top 10 Social Networking Sites,” you will get several lists that have different opinions on just exactly what sites are in the top ten.

These lists rank the sites based on different criteria, some of which is totally based on the ranker’s attitudes or success with marketing or using any of the sites.

There are differing opinions on the value of the mass of traffic that can blitz your site from any of the popular social networking sites. The user profile on almost any of them is definitely on the young side, which seems to be addicted to publishing and watching homemade videos uploaded by other young users like themselves…not exactly the prime market for most Internet Marketers who create and sell text-based ebooks.

MySpace has 115,000,000 subscribers worldwide. That list was generated by teens and their favorite bands. How many of that group would be targeted traffic and interested in your products, if you started a mass wave of traffic to your site from MySpace?

In response to the popularity of that media, sites marketing with videos are springing up all over the Web. It is becoming normal to find a video demonstration or one with the site owner talking about the benefits of buying his products on any sales letter at the top of most sales pages.

There’s entire web sites dedicated to the sale of videos focused on any subject. Internet marketing and how to make a living online is still a prime subject. The only thing that’s changed is the method of delivering the sales message. The ease of making these videos and getting them online is fueling the dramatic increase of their prominence on websites.

Any kid with a digital camcorder, microphone, and software can make videos all day long. And some are doing just that and uploading them to YouTube and any other site that catches their attention as fast as they can.

If you want to join this new Web revolution and can’t get your head around the new technology, check out your own kid or your neighbor’s kid…they know how to do it.

The young age of the social networking members is one of the problems of using these powerful sites to drive traffic to your blog or sales page. It is not hard to send several hundred, or even several thousand, warm bodies to your site. All you have to do is bookmark it the way each site wants it done and then get social and join communities and make friends.

You need to ask yourself if the traffic a social networking site could send to your server would benefit your business. Most of the young visitors would not be interested in your products, but in investigating your site to see what they could download, or even mess with. It’s not a marketing site or real business to them, but a virtual adventure. You probably don’t want them to get to your source code.

If you have a blog, some are noted for posting negative comments and running down your server by their sheer numbers. Some marketers have reported zero sales after several thousand social networking visitors showed up and checked out their site. This just proves that often repeated adage: “Targeted traffic is your goal… not numbers.”

If you believe the media buzz always circulating about these social networking sites, the older, wildly popular ones, like MySpace.com and Facebook, are losing ground to newer, more flexible networking sites.

From a list-building point of view, you have to consider what sites are gaining large amounts of subscribers and which ones are losing ground or barely holding their own. Here are some Alexa and Google rankings to consider:

Rank Social Networking Sites (Posted January 14, 2008)

(Alexa/Google PR)

#1… http://360.yahoo.com (1/7)
#2… http://www.orkut.com (2/9)
#3… http://spaces.live.com (4/
#4… http://www.myspace.com (6/
#5… http://www.facebook.com (7/
#6… http://www.hi5.com (8/6)
#7… http://www.friendster.com (14/7)
#8… http://www.fotolog.com (15/7)
#9… http://www.livejournal.com (60/8)
#10.. http://www.xanga.com (99/7)

#14.. http://www.stumbleupon.com (298/8)
#19.. http://www.buzznet.com (593/6)

#21.. http://www.twitter.com (639/8)
#22.. http://www.squidoo.com (728/7)
#23.. http://www.mybloglog.com (769/7)

#34.. http://www.yuwie.com (2,124/5)
#36.. http://www.hubpages.com (2,632/6)

The more you check out “facts,” figures and lists, the less sense it all makes. On several lists of the Top 10 or 100 Social Networking Sites, Digg was a top rated site and it isn’t even on the list those numbers above came from…Top 100 Social Networking Sites. If you’re wondering why, Digg is considered a social news site and not strictly a social networking site.

As a marketer, it is your business to get your products and your message in front of “the largest audience possible.” There are over 350 social networking sites online with subscribers in the hundreds of millions. Finding the largest audience shouldn’t be a problem. But, shouldn’t your business actually be getting your products in front of “The largest targeted audience possible?”

One of the biggest benefits of any social networking site is the sense of community that can be developed with an online group of like-minded members. Connecting with others who have shared interests, building online profiles and sharing music, photos and videos forms a strong virtual community that is both attractive and seductive.

If a savvy marketer can figure out a way to tap into the interests of those virtual communities and send them to a page with resources that interest them, they might find their sales and list numbers climbing out of sight.

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