Social Networking Taking Market Share from Dating

SOURCE - http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/080916-093442

Social networks are projected to generate $7.3 billion in advertising revenues by 2013. That will amount to a steady rise in revenues over 2008's projected $1.1 billion.
According to report author Dr. Windsor Holden, "It's clear that we have seen an industry wide shift regarding the implementation of business models in this area. Whereas initially there was a perception that users would pay a small mobility premium to access social networks on their handsets, it rapidly became clear that to achieve truly mass adoption, it would be necessary to offer free membership and then to augment that with advertising and the sale of premium content."

Meanwhile, Hitwise general manager of global research, Bill Tancer, is saying that searches for pornography are down about 50% due to increase in searches for social networking.

"My theory is that young users spend so much time on social networks that they don't have time to look at adult sites," Tancer told Reuters.

Tancer analyzes search behavior and its reflection on society in his new book, Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why It Matters.



What do you think of the rise in social networking? Is it changing societal behavior? Give us your thoughts in the comments.

Web users 'fear media intrusion'

Almost 80% of social networking site users would be more careful about the details they put online if they knew the media might use them, a poll says.

The Press Complaints Commission said 89% of the 1,000 people polled wanted guidelines on what the media could use.

And 42% of 16 to 24-year-old who used such websites said they knew someone who had been embarrassed by material which was posted without consent.

The PCC is opening talks on how it should respond to the issue.

'Unprecedented'

The chairman of the PCC, the publishing industry's self-regulating watchdog, Sir Christopher Meyer, said personal information was being put into the public domain on an unprecedented scale and that this had serious ramifications for the regulation of media outlets.

"This clearly has implications for the PCC, which has always had the task of deciding where to draw the boundaries between what newspapers and magazines may legitimately publish and what can rightly be considered private," he said.

"The challenge remains the same for online editorial content, including material taken from social networking sites.

There are wider cultural and other issues going beyond the PCC  Sir Christopher Meyer, PCC

"In the digital age, self-regulation, with its sound principles and speed of operation, has never been more relevant."

The poll, which was conducted for the PCC by Ipsos-Mori, also found that 89% of internet users polled said there should be clear guidelines about what types of information could be used by the media.

They said that this would allow people to complain if the information published about them was wrong or intrusive.

Consent

The poll also found 49% of respondents said it was wrong for the media to use information they had posted on line without asking the consent of the person concerned.

And 58% were fairly or very concerned about the lack of control about how they were depicted on websites.

And of social networking site members, 55% considered whether personal details such as photos might be used by someone else without their consent, before posting them online.

Sir Christopher said the PCC's current code of practice would be able to handle complaints about media outlets using material skimmed from networking sites.

But he added: "There are wider cultural and other issues going beyond the PCC to be debated, which is why we have taken the initiative of conducting the survey."

Online Dating vs Social Networking

The online dating sites are now finding themselves in competition with the influx of social networking sites. Social networking sites are on the rise. With so many social networking sites, and MySpace being so popular, online dating sites are worrying that their clients may go somewhere else.

Online dating services have something special though. Try finding a date on MySpace. I think you would have a hard time finding the right person for you. There are so many people and so many of them are there just to find friends, not dates, that you would have to read through all the profiles to find the other people who are looking for dates too. With an online dating service you wouldn't have to do that, all the people are there to look for dates.

Online dating services have started allowing clients on their site to link to theirmyspace profiles, or whatever social networking site they have profiles on. This is their way of keeping their clients on their service while still letting them see what other things their potential dates may have to offer and letting them learn more about each other at the same time.