Three years ago, if you were a marketer with a MySpace account keeping up with the latest thing, you either had to position yourself as cutting edge or keep quiet about the fact that you were fraternizing with a bunch of 15-year-olds.
Things have changed.
First, MySpace itself has attracted an older demographic, and 60% of its users are now 25 and older, according to Hitwise.
Second, the success of MySpace and Facebook has invigorated the market for social networking sites targeting people beyond the high school and college crowds.
As a percentage of all visits to the Web by US adult Internet users, 6% are made to social networking sites, which puts it above the percentage of visits made to news-gathering sites but below those to online shopping sites. The bottom line is that social networking has broader appeal than just MySpace and Facebook.
Tween social networking site Club Penguin had four million unique visitors in January 2007, according to comScore Media Metrix.
Dedicated job networking site LinkedIn has nine million members, and has been adding more than 100,000 users a week, The Boston Globe has reported. Even when school affiliations fade in importance, the need to network persists, and LinkedIn's pared-down look and feel proclaim it as the logical next adult step for social networkers in a way that Facebook's party-hearty emphasis never will.
Yankee Group analyst Jennifer Simpson has said that social networking membership would work out much the way people now maintain multiple e-mail accounts for different purposes.
On the ad spending side, eMarketer senior analyst and social networking specialist Debra Aho Williamson notes some of the trends driving growth in social network placements.
"Marketers are rapidly embracing social networking, leading to tight inventory at several sites," said Ms. Williamson. "Video inventory, in particular, is in high demand. While some spending is still experimental, more marketers are clearly committing actual budgeted funds to social networking and other user-generated content environments."
Also contributing to growth are the globalization of MySpace and the proliferation of niche networks. eMarketer estimates that social network ad spending will reach $865 million this year, and nearly $2.2 billion in 2010.
