Membership growth in social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook in all regions is expected to peak in 2009 and level off by 2012.
According to market tracker Datamonitor, global active memberships in social networking sites will reach 230 million at the end of 2007. The firm expects revenues from social networking services to reach $965 million this year, growing to $2.4 billion by 2012.
New! Watch this Network World Webcast - Webcast: Improve your network with unified Gigabit gear By year-end 2007, Asia Pacific will account for 35% of the world’s social networking memberships. Europe, the Middle East and Africa will hold 28%, North America 25% and the Caribbean and Latin America region will account for 12%, Datamonitor says.
But the firm cautions social networking companies and investors not to get giddy with the growth and popularity of the services. Although players would like to be in on the next Google or Yahoo, exuberance must be tempered with memories of the Internet bubble bursting at the beginning of this decade