Who Needs a Bowling League to Make Friends When Theres the Web?
Tuesday, October 24, 2006 http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/kevinmaney/2006-10-24-new-social-networks_x.htm The online equivalent of bowling leagues — now there’s the next big thing on the Web. Social networking on the Web is already huge, and it’s only going to get bigger. But the next stage of the trend is not all about MySpace adding to its 100 million members. A lot of tech entrepreneurs are betting on a new generation of sites that build social networking around activities or interests. Such sites include Splice, MyBlogLog, Hotsoup and Dodgeball. Sneakerplay is a social network built around, of all things, sneaker fanatics. Google is buying YouTube in part because of YouTube’s social networking around videos. These kinds of sites are beginning to circle MySpace like a piranha sizing up a hippo. See, there’s a hitch to MySpace. What people do there barely qualifies as normal human behavior. The site isn’t really about anything other than socializing. In the real world, MySpace
