"Web 2.0, mashups and social networking - what is it all about? "

continued...

A great example of social networking is the hugely popular MySpace.com - an online community that lets you meet your friends' friends and colleagues. A single profile can generate a little "world" of people who have similar interests, with these worlds eventually overlapping with other worlds. It's useful to the user and a marketers dream :). MySpace has really found it's niche in music and band branding - many of the top bands in the world have MySpace pages.

Another pioneer that has become extraordinarily successful is Friendster. 

From an ecommerce aspect, LinkedIn is a great example, with over 4 million members. I've been a member of LinkedIn for a while and it's very interesting to see who knows whom. Big players such as Google and Adobe have representation in the network, allowing LinkedIn members a route via their network of connections to some of the decision makers within large companies.

The popularity of social networking applications reinforces the validity of the theory of "six degrees of separation"; that is, that any two human beings, regardless of age, color, creed or social status have some sort of connection within five intermediaries. For example:

- I know Fred, who works in the Department of Commerce
- Fred regularly communicates with his boss
- His boss meets with the agency head once a week
- The agency head communicates with one of the President's inner circle
- That person lunches with the President every month to discuss issues.

While I'm based in Australia and have never met the President of the USA, I have "connections" to him, only separated by 5 degrees. Web based social networking applications will probably decrease the number of degrees of separation for millions of people in the years ahead.

The humble blog can also be considered to be a form of social networking application. It invites others to comment on items and the blog itself "pings" another blog when a post is made that relates to the other blog. It's a more insular world, but very effective nonetheless for building large networks. Many bloggers, through the exchange of links and post quoting, build up huge networks - not just of users and subscribers, but of other bloggers.