In Real World your network may end at certain point - but in web world your network is indefinite as much as you can go

Social Networking( aka web 2.0 ) . . . It's the way the 21st century communicates today.  We are all part of this fast growing web.It may be for making friends, keeping touch with old friends , find info about your hobby , searching for a new sweet heart or to promote your own business - social networking sites like facebook , myspace, bebo , orkut , twitter ... are the places.  The disbursement of news and breaking news is no more by the Media tycoons but by common people like you and me . Networks like twitter and youtube have paved way for this new journalism - the Citizen journalism . People are spending more and more  time on social networking sites . Either you are a dad/uncle or a yo-zo teenager it doesn't matter and it will be concluded that you are still lingering  in yesteryears if you are not on at-least one social networking site. The friends that you can make are just one of the many benefits to social networking online. Another one of those benefits includes diversity because the Internet gives individuals from all around the world access to social networking sites. This means that although you are in the United States, you could develop an online friendship with someone in Denmark or India. Not only will you make new friends, but you just might learn a thing or two about new cultures or new languages and learning is always a good thing. Of course social networking has there own cup of disturbances and disadvantages....

The Facebook Victory

Facebook managed a good takeoff while others slumped - Alexa graph showing the % of global internet users visiting each site

At the turn of the previous decade social networking started gaining focus.New social networking methods were developed by the end of the 1990s, and many sites began to develop more advanced features for users to find and manage friends.  

This newer generation of social networking sites began to flourish with the emergence of Friendster in 2002, and soon became part of the Internet mainstream. Friendster was followed by MySpace and LinkedIn a year later, and finally, Bebo. Attesting to the rapid increase in social networking sites' popularity, by 2005, MySpace was reportedly getting more page views than Google. Facebook, launched in 2004, has since become the largest social networking site in the world.    

Today, it is estimated that there are now over 200 active sites using a wide variety of social networking models. But the biggest fact here is being a relatively late entrant into the game facebook managed to steal the number uno position. Myspace did this stealing( I don't mean any crime - you can say attracted ) of users from Friendster (Friendster is now surviving in some asian countries like Philippines ) and the same was repeated by facebook to Myspace. Twitter always kept an healthy position slowly growing towards top. While the big names are clashing on global level - websites like okut manage a very strong position in smaller and newer markets like brazil ,India etc. A comparison of twitter and orkut is shown below - while orkut failed clinging on it's numbers and slowly slided down the ramp twitter jumped off around 2009.

Facebook Vs Myspace 

 The decline of Myspace and explosive growth of Facebook is evident from the adjacent graph. The perceived missteps of Myspace are numerous. Some observers say it clung too long to a "portal strategy," in which it sought to amass an audience around entertainment content. By contrast, Facebook maintained its focus on features that enhance the social-networking experience, such as the "News Feed" that matches the immediacy of Twitter's staccato updates. "The speed with which a company like Facebook is able to innovate and keep things fresh is the key to survival in this space," said Charlene Li, founder of Altimeter Group, a research firm specializing in social networking. "There are new things like Twitter that come along. What does Facebook do? It does Twitter . . . and it does it better."  

MySpace's miscalculations have cost it ground in its competition against Facebook. Facebook played  hide and seek for sometime . And now Myspace is a gone story and twitter,linkedin are still trying to maintain their own grounds and above all -much above is the Facebook .Another thing worth mentioning  and relevant here is the fact that Facebook is the world's second most visited website just below Google and is trying all it's best to beat google soon ... Adjacent picture shows the narrowing gap between the two.

How Orkut Is Killed in its Own Area?

There is a small step upwards in the Facebook growth around end of 2009 - this is due to crushing smaller ones like orkut in their own arena like in India . Around 2008 and 09 orkut grown rapidly in India and is the buzz word everywhere. It's simple sleek layout suited for slow speeds of India and Brazil . It made news and breaking news. Everything went on well and it even managed the tide of twitter - but the problem arrived with Facebook.  

Orkut enjoying an ever increasing user base, started improving privacy allowing for locking of profiles , images ... This has severly hampered teenage guys in their search for sweet hearts .As India being a relatively traditional  country with more shying girls, internet is a good place to search for girl friends/dream girls for Indian teens. So many didn't liked the increased privacy of orkut. At this juncture entered Facebook with it's all open culture with little privacy .  Mean while orkut tried to update it's look to a better design. The newer design confused more people than helped and people started trying Facebook .

Orkut contained the growth of Facebook to some extent by not allowing to import it's contacts to facebook . Frankly no idea what happened at the back door facebook got the feature of importing contacts and that bolted an ending nail to orkut dominance in India. So Facebook could cash on all the hard work orkut has done - with a single click one can import all the friends and links. Facebook is now fourth in India followed by a distant seventh of Orkut.  See below how google's own website Google Trends accepts the fact orkut has rapidly declined in India while facebook shooted up. The Red is Facebook and The Blue is Orkut..

Thus Facebook emerged as the biggest nation on social networking globe with as many as 400 million users ( third most populous country) and what is going to be the future twist ????? And what shape the Web 3.0 will take ? Till than keep posting images , and keep scribbling on your friends' wall while other social networking sites will be trying to gain your focus....