1. Guided Group Discussion:

2. Interaction Building an online community Sharing interests and activities Communicating with known associates Sharing photos Sharing videos Blogging Networking with strangers Developing a sense of ‘belonging’

7. Facebook 'sees decline in users' (Feb 2008) ‘ Users fell 5% to 8.5 million in January from 8.9 million in December.’ ‘ MySpace users had fallen by 5% in January, while Bebo's audience had fallen 2%.’ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7257073.stm Is Social Networking Dead or Dying? (July 2008) ‘ Although most social networks are still going strong, it appears that the overall market share of social networking sites is beginning to decrease. Hitwise reports that the social networking market share has decreased about 20% year over year’ http://www.bizreport.com/2008/07/ Global survey shows 58% of people don't know what social networking is, plus over one third of social networkers are losing interest (September 2008) Synovate asked adult consumers if they were losing interest in online social networking. Overall, 36% of social network users said yes, led by those in Japan (55%), Slovakia (48%), Canada (47%), Poland (45%) and the US (45%). Social networkers in Indonesia and France were the least likely to be losing interest, at only 18% and 21%, respectively. http://www.synovate.com/news/article/2008/09/ Bubble Alert: Facebook Traffic Declines 10% in April (May 2008) [A significant decline in month-over-month unique visitors to Facebook in the US. In April, traffic fell to 22.4M uniques, down from the 24.9M reported in March. Year-over-year traffic growth decelerated from 98% to 56%. MySpace also saw a slight decline (from 60.3M to 58.7M), while LinkedIn continued its growth from 7.8M uniques in March to 8.6M in April. ~Neilson Online ‘ Although most social networks are still going strong, it appears that the overall market share of social networking sites is beginning to decrease. Hitwise reports that the social networking market share has decreased about 20% year over year’ http://mashable.com/2008/05/20/facebook-traffic-decline/

9. A Small Scale Quantitative Research Study