Do you use Facebook?

This is a very good article at Techradar about Facebook and its expected growth. It covers social networks in general as well as looking at some specific examples.

One very good point

Eventually, though, the growth stops. It has to.
You know those pyramid scams where you pay to join the scheme, and
people you recruit pay you, and you're told you'll end up a
millionaire? They all run out of steam, leaving almost everybody out of
pocket, because to sustain the level of growth you soon need to recruit
10 times the population of the planet.

It's the
same with social networks. Once you've added everybody you can think
of, including people you'll later regret adding, you tend to stop
sending invites. The fun wears off, you update your status less
frequently, you get fed up fending off stupid requests to use stupid
applications, and you start looking for a new playground.

It goes on to say that the new playground is Twitter. I use Twitter! It also mentions Stephen Fry who I follow. I always liked him as an actor, but he is a good microblogger as well.

So what is the relevance of all this? One thing it shows is the transience of our attractions. The future of the Net, and thereby all communications and entertainment, may be one of transitory sensations which increasingly fail to excite us. Facebook is already in decline just a couple of years after it broke big, can it be true? MySpace is already a dinosaur in the social networking realm and several others have already gone bust last year.

How long will I have with Twitter, and what will replace it? My family is following me on Twitter so that they can see my day to day stuff rather than waiting for one of those occasional emails I send home. In an increasingly ad driven Net, I think we will we be perpetually bombarded by the latest trends only to be followed by the heartbreak of loss when it fades into the background.

Read the article. IT would make a good Portfolio paper.