Social networking sites are the future of Internet marketing. The good news is that the opportunities for laser-targeted advertising are becoming a reality. Want to target 18-24 year old college graduate women who are engaged? Well, you can…in Facebook. The bad news is that, with this added power, comes much added complexity.

The traditional way of paying for clicks and optimizing links etc. for search engine optimization will not work in a world where the users generate the content…and decide amongst themselves what is popular and what is not. Internet marketers will have to become much more savvy to take advantage of this kind of opportunity. More good news is that there is still time to get an early adopter advantage in this space. It’s almost impossible to dislodge that web site that’s 8 or 9 years old from the number one spot in Google (I don’t care what anyone says they can do for thousands of dollars!) search engine listings, but…in this new arena…you could be that “old” site.

Some facts about social networking sites

MySpace had more traffic in 2007 than Google

Already, FaceBook has reached Google traffic levels

YouTube gets twice as much traffic as Google

These sites are DOUBLING every 6 months ; FaceBook adds 1 million visitors each week

In a typical month.

30% of worldwide Internet users visit MySpace
29% visit FaceBook
35% visit YouTube

It’s not just kids discussing what they’re going to wear to the prom

Over 50% of MySpace users are over 35
Facebook even has 100k users over 64