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McKinsey, the dark masters of management consultancy, are to host a meeting of some of the most powerful people in the web and advertising businesses to plot ways to exploit the popularity of social networking sites amongst the young, according to a report in the FT this morning.

   

Plans for the meeting reflect the rapid shifts felt by the media industry as people, particularly younger internet users, spend increasing amounts of time on social networking sites such as MySpace and sharing photos, videos and blogs created by themselves rather than professionally produced content.

An accompanying  article by Chris Nuttall has a good overview of social networking at the moment, including the many challenges and pitfalls faced by both the networks themselves and marketers looking to reach the people using them.

At the end of the day still no one seems to know whether this is the start of a long growth cycle for sites like MySpace and Bebo or whether it is a fad about to pop.

   

“There’s too much trend growth to know, the pie is growing so fast,” says Bob Ivins, managing director of comScore Europe.

   

Ben Schachter, internet analyst at UBS, warns: “There have been plenty of internet sites with strong growth that have subsequently deflated again. Will MySpace, in a year’s time, be like Friendster [and lose momentum] or will it be like Yahoo?”

: : For some an interesting counterpoint take a look at Jackie Danicki’s account of her experience of signing up for MySpace. I’ve tried it out too – and it just isn’t for me in so many ways, but she puts her finger on some real flaws from the user experience PoV. There’s stuff happens there you just wouldn’t tolerate anywhere else. Are "the yoot" being taken for a ride there?

Tags: mysapce, bebo, socialnetwork, chrisnuttall, FT

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