Digital Socializing

Between them, MySpace and Facebook rule the roost. In fact, 65 percent of all visits to social networking sites land on one of these two; and on its own, Facebook grabs more than 6 percents of all visits in the United States, period.

So what makes up the other 35 percent? According to the Experian Hitwise database of online usage of more than 10 million U.S. Internet users, there are now more than 5,580 social networking sites beyond Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Amazing.

While MySpace and Facebook are fairly general town squares in the digital world of ours, more and more demand is created for special interest sites (such as model airplane construction, diving, and barefoot hiking), leading to a virtual (pun intended) explosion in niche networks. There's a good chance that such a network exists to meet your particular demand.

Bill Tancer recently wrote an article that covered some of the up-and-coming sites.

Some samples:

Launched in 2004, Yelp.com allows visitors to review restaurants, bars, doctors, dentists, etc., for the benefit of the many. This site initially took off in the major cities such as San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, but has since grown in popularity and influence throughout the United States.

Are you Interested in reviewing a new restaurant in your neighborhood? Yelp.com is your site. Some of its reviewers recommend new venues, while others go one step further and suggest what to order. After returning from dinner, do your part by returning the favor: post your own review.

Then there are sites like BuzzNet.com, which is a social network built upon music, personal taste and favorite artists. Other sites, like TMZ.com and PerezHilton.com cater to the celebrity obsessed, while Zimbio, a user-created Ezine covers a variety of topics, and has been gaining in popularity of late.

If you are looking for deeper and more meaningful exchanges (at the opposite end of the pendulum from Twitter's 140-character shorthand), there are social networks like Gather.com which caters to precisely that.

Or, you want to give (or need) advice, say about what to do as a new mom. Cafe Mom and Momversation are built to provide just that.

Then there are the fix-it type networks, such as FixYa.com, a social network whose mission it is to help you solve problems with your car, computer, light fixtures, waffle baker, or anything else that you can think of.

The French writer Romain Gary once said, "What man needs most of all is friendship," and I don't think he could have hit the nail more squarely on the head. The amazing number, and versatility, of digital social networks bear witness to the veracity of that. Man likes to communicate and to share. The digital age facilitates that, in spades.