Mysteries of adolescence infuse social internet sites

Social Networks/News/Article/Chris Nuttall
Found on: FT.com

Social networking sites are beginning to suffer the same growing pains as the teenagers fuelling their expansion – they have little idea what the future holds and the grown-ups, as in advertisers, analysts and old media, are not really sure how to relate to them.

They are also growing up fast, in all kinds of unexpected places; their friends can be fickle and their activities can offend.

News Corp’s MySpace is the hottest new kid on the block with 65m unique visitors last month. Although the comScore research firm still rates it third worldwide behind Yahoo’s Geocities and MSN Spaces with 116m and 101m visitors respectively, MySpace members grew 111 per cent over six months and the average minutes each one spends on MySpace per month is 184, compared to just four minutes for Geocities.