Law X.0

Niche Social Networks Gaining Traction

Check out MySpace, Facebook: Big Not Always Better on CNN. The story notes that huge social-networking sites are losing people to smaller, specialized sites.

Professor Kagan observes on his A Little Class on the Internet blog:

An intriguing question is whether the next phase in social networking will be a migration to micro-interest sites. For now, FB and MS are permitting these niche sites to build widgets that integrate into the larger sites, so that users can keep tabs on all their social networks from a single location. But will that be enough as FB and MS users realize that the high-quality information and truly devoted hobbyists/interestists on niche sites exceed the lowest-common-denominator status that comes with having a truly immense user base?

Seems inevitable to me. [JH]

Is Facebook Overrated?

The article is about the advertising prospects of Facebook and MySpace. "Members of both Facebook and its chief rival, MySpace, spend on average about 3 1/2 hours a month clicking around on each site, but they get so caught up in checking out their friends' pages and updating their own that they are less likely to click through to the ads, writes Anita Hamilton in this Time article. [JH]

Victim Uses Facebook to ID Suspect

CNN is reporting that police arrested a suspect in an alleged hate-crime attack on the Georgetown University campus thanks to the victim who searched through Facebook profiles to identify his attacker. [JH]