Social Networking, as a concept, has been around since the beginning of time. People gather and converse, meeting others that share similar ideas and interests. The first church was social networking. The first government. The first rock concert. On the internet, social networking, as it is often referred to, is rather new in the mainstream, but is changing how we as people gather and organize everything in our lives, from news to research to media and entertainment.

Over the past few years, three different online social networking websites have appeared on the scene that have literally changed the way the world gathers news and information:

Digg, a technology news and information site, lets its viewers vote on news articles that are submitted by other Digg users. The articles with the most votes gets placed very highly in the Digg results pages, and therefore gets viewed first by anyone searching for that particular subject. Sound familiar? Ranking in Digg is very similar to a search engine, except that here other people decide who ranks high, not a software program.

Delicious is a website that allows you to store and share your favorite online things like pictures, movies, and more importantly, other websites, with the rest of the world. You also have the ability to add short keywords to each that describe what it is you’re sharing. You can already see where this is going.

Now, others will search delicious to find information on something, and the results that they get will all be based on the keyword tags from other users. Finding information on delicious allows you to take a peak into other people’s favorite websites and interests in the hopes of finding new things that you yourself will enjoy. Delicious was purchased by Yahoo in 2005 as the search giant saw the huge potential this has in information search.

MySpace has to be the most popular and most profitable form of social networking today on the internet. Each registered user at MySpace gets a webpage explaining everything or anything a user wants to share to the world;pictures, interests, blogs, messages, links, — anything the mind can imagine. Each user then can “add” friends to their page, and this list is shown to the world. Basically, a viewer can literally search through and take a good look at the lives of millions of people and decide if they want to “be their friend”, send messages, share interests and so on.

The potential of MySpace is enormous, and not just for the youth that make up most of MySpace. It’s a place for everyone to showcase what they’re into, what they’re all about. It’s no surprise that thousands of musical acts have sprouted up advertising on MySpace, some to a very high degree of success. All “word of mouth” and a fantastic form of Viral Marketing, MySpace is a must-have form of advertising not only for your business but also for yourself. However, as stated before, most techniques in marketing online can be recipes for disaster if not implemented properly. Separating yourself from your business must be considered if you plan on showcasing your after-hours escapades online as much of My Space’s younger members occasionally do.