Social Web: Only the start

Social networking isn't going anywhere, parents. That's the basic parental take-away from the Global Internet Summit in Laguna Beach, Calif., this week: The social Web, with all its faces – from social networking to blogging to media-sharing – is "poised to shape [the] Web's future," CNET reports. "Social networks such as MySpace.com are already challenging traditional portals. MySpace, for example, has surpassed MSN and AOL by measure of monthly page views … and its traffic equals roughly 75% of Yahoo's, the No. 1 site on the Web," CNET added, citing remarks by Safa Rashtchy, managing director and senior analyst at investment firm Piper Jaffray. MySpace had 50 million visitors in March. Not that these monster Web 2.0 sites or anyone else knows how they'll turn their huge traffic numbers into comparable revenues, but it's a safe bet they'll figure it out. Meanwhile, this week comScore MediaMetrix released its latest social-networking figures, with MySpace the Web's 7th most high-traffic site (after giants such as Google, eBay, and Yahoo). May's Top 6 SN sites were MySpace.com, Classmates.com, Facebook.com, YouTube.com, MSN Spaces, and Xanga.com, respectively.