Reading a lot of articles about social networking, one gets the impression that the consensus is that MySpace is peaking. MySpace will ever die, I think, but whether it will be
the destination it is now in five years seems doubtful. Right now no other site holds a candle to its critical mass, but that doesn't mean everyone else is resting on their laurels. Blogger Fred Stutzman has written an interesting article called
Social Networking: Five Sites You Need to Know, in which he examines five of the most promising, but low-profile, contenders for MySpace's throne. On his list are
Cyworld, with 90% penetration among South Korean youth,
Bebo, which has 20 million registered users and is especially popular in the U.K.,
Hi5 with 40 million users and a strong presence in India,
Faceparty, a long-established U.K. brand with 6 million users and an interesting monetization scheme, and
XuQa, a service with just 1 million users aimed at the college set, which Stutzman describes as "purposefully racy, full of game-like features-an anti-Facebook." He concludes with some sound observations about social networking trends. If you're interested in social networking but as sick of MySpace as I am, it's worth a read.
Tags: bebo, cyworld, facebook, faceparty, Fred Stutzman, FredStutzman, friendster, hi5, myspace, social, socialnetworking, tagworld, xuqa
