While adwords involves advertising on Google and spending money, article marketing is free and this is the reason it is hugely popular, especially with people who are starting out and do not wish to invest any money. There are also many experienced marketers who do article marketing successfully.

The concept of article marketing is to get as many interesting articles as possible out there for people to read. The idea is to make them want more and entice them to visit the website concerned. This is possible only when the article provides something of value to the reader.

The length of the articles does not matter as long as they are between 300 – 500 words and informative. A complete beginner can start making money easily with article marketing.

Speed Writing

Articles don’t have to be masterpieces of literature but they have to be meaningful and provide useful reading. Speed is crucial as the success of article marketing depends on the number of articles that you can get to circulate out there. This helps get plenty of traffic to the website. Never use article spinners and auto generated content. Every article should be unique and add value to the article directories they are submitted to and be informative for the readers.

There are several people that churn out around 25 articles or more in a day and if one does it for 5 days a week, it is 125 articles in a week. The more articles, the better the edge one has. Doing this for six months to an year will ensure a steady income for a long time to come. Many top article marketers continue to receive checks for work done years ago. Speed matters.

There are a few things to keep in mind to do well with article marketing:
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Selection of the Product

Anyone who has been part of the internet marketing community for any length of time would have heard complaints of not making sales with article marketing. The reason usually is that the products they are promoting are not good and not even the best marketers can sell a bad product.

Keyword Research

Keyword research should be done only after selecting a good product for promotion. The secret is to find a great product on Clickbank that already sells well and has a good commission for the affiliates, along with a great sales page that draws people. Next comes keyword research.

Use a good keyword tool to find at least 20 keywords in the niche you are targeting. Article marketing works by domination and the best way to go about it is to saturate the market with lots of articles. It is important to promote every product this way or it can lead to failure.

There is a lot of debate over the search count of an article. Some keywords may get below 500 searches and some may get above 15000. As long as the keyword is highly targeted and relevant to the niche, it is a good idea to write an article on that without bothering about the number of searches.

Submission of Articles

Ezinearticles.com is an article directory where articles can be submitted for free. Many people use multiple accounts to submit articles. In fact, this is considered to be a good thing because more number of articles on each keyword can be submitted. Imagine the glory of having two articles in the top of Google rankings for a single keyword. This helps double the exposure with more people reading the articles.

Articles can be submitted to other article directories but they have to be unique. The same articles should never be submitted to all the article directories, as this is looked at as duplicate content by the search engines and will only do more harm than good in terms of search engine ranking.

Readers should be directed from the article links to a presell page on the website. It is preferable to have links to your articles in the navigation area, as that makes it a content website and will be liked by visitors as well as article directories, and increase sales too.

Choose the winners from Clickbank and milk them as much as possible by producing a huge number of articles, to get the best out of each product that is promoted. You certainly don’t want to be guilty of leaving money on the table.

Finally, here is a great tip for you. Provide incentives as people need a reason to buy NOW! Give them a plan of action that they can use and benefit from. If your product is about creating content websites for adsense, you can incorporate in your articles, a wonderful traffic generation method that really works. Then explain in the article byline that you have a product that will make it easy to create content sites and they will just have to put the two together to make money.

People usually buy products and let them gather dust because they don’t know how to use them. When you provide a complete solution, they would be willing to spend money on your product.

Use this action plan on one product a week and see how well you will do promoting affiliate products.

What are people looking for? How do they find it? These become the two most crucial questions that need to be asked when trying to direct traffic to a website.

Let us first understand that this search-engine based traffic is free traffic and to gain access to this traffic, a webmaster has to work at two levels; the setting up of a perfect content management system and at the article level. Both become very important.

Here let us see from a writer’s perspective, at how a good article needs to be written to attract quality search engine traffic.

Out of the three sources for traffic; friends of the webmaster who come directly to the website; people who come to the site by following links at other sites; the traffic that is directed by the search engines to a particular article becomes very important. A decent website is said to be one that can attract search engine traffic, which is at least half of all the traffic.

Search engine traffic comes to different pages within the website and it solely depends on the content within the web pages. It thus becomes important that every article on a site draws some traffic to the site.

How search engines send traffic

The whole process starts when people type in a search phrase into Google or some other search engine. The search engine searches its databases to find that phrase and displays all the pages containing the phrase in an order. It is important that an article shows up at the top of the search results to increase clickthroughs. Search engines display the results based on the PageRank. It is necessary to put the keywords that people are looking for in the article to show up higher in the results. There are better chances for showing up early in the search results, if there are more keywords, if they appear more frequently and if they appear earlier in the article. Here, it is also important to understand that a webmaster has to be careful not to fake things by using irrelevant keywords or stuffing with too many keywords, as the site can get blacklisted by the search engines.

Keyword phrases to be used

This depends on who the article is aimed at. Try and think what sort of words people searching on this particular topic will come up with. What are they likely to type in the search boxes? Write down all the words or phrases, other topics that are closely related to the article topic, the names of famous people that are associated with this topic and the current hot topic that revolves around this topic. The challenge is to try and incorporate all of them into the article.

Popularity of the topic

All the topics are not popular and do not attract the same amount of interest. While iPhone attracts huge search engine traffic, it is not possible to only write about iPhones. Sometimes, a keyword that a webmaster wishes to target may not be receiving enough traffic, then the idea is to find a related keyword that has a lot of traffic and incorporate that into the article too.

Heading is Important

Getting the search phrase into the heading is the best way of getting into the good books of the search engines. This again has to be a word or phrase that people search for.

Related Keywords

Remember, that people do not search for what a webmaster has in mind. They search for what they have in mind. They could use different variations and combinations. There are several keyword tools that show up related keywords, which will give an idea of what related keywords or phrases need to be used in the article. If the website is about telescopes, then it becomes essential that all the articles and content contain the word telescope. However, the related words, such as the types of telescopes can be included in the pages.

Some of the keyword tools are; keyworddiscovery.com and freekeywords.wordtracker.com

Quote an authority

Another thing that helps is quoting an authority on the topic where possible. This helps bring authority to a website.

Captions- A neglected zone

Captions that are given for pictures and tables are another area where keyword rich sentences can be written. This is where many webmasters go wrong and write generic ones that sound good. In the search engine world, this is considered a huge crime.

Greek and Latin

Starting an article with Greek, Latin, Roman or Sanskrit words looks and sounds good, but that is where it all ends. It may even get a couple of people but definitely will not get the kind of traffic that one can get when plain English is written.

Long gone are the days of the printed word, when it was not the business of the writer to ensure the reader picks up the magazine. Good search engine rankings and traffic are now based not only on the structure of the site but also on the articles that are written. The power lies more in a good well-written article.

While the first phase made information easily available, the second, known as Web 2.0, taught users how to interact with that information, with several new concepts, such as social networking, collective intelligence and web as a platform, which are well-known by their street names Google Maps, Wikipedia, Facebook and others. After Web 2.0, what next?

When has the internet ever stagnated? There has always been something new happening around the corner, something else that made life much easier and better than ever before.

Web 3.0, also termed as the Semantic Web by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, has arrived with all the glory of its predecessor.

Currently, people can link a web page to another page but cannot link the data together. Data has to be retrieved by going through the links and looking for the information within the links.

Search engines are used, by typing in the keywords and getting the links, which lead to related information. They do not provide the data itself but bring back the links to that data.

In Semantic Web, machines can do what humans do. They can read the web pages and interpret them. Semantic web thinks much beyond keywords and looks at natural language processing, which means users can type in the question completely and not just the keywords, to retrieve information.

Although, this technology is already being used for a few years now, it is only taking off now. A Semantic web agent has nothing to do with artificial intelligence; it works by adding metadata that is machine readable, to web pages that are read by humans. Structured sets of information and rules help it understand the relationship between different sources of data.

It is a fact that computers, as advanced as they may be, cannot understand data as humans do; however, when they have plenty of information at their disposal, they can make connections between relevant data as well as take decisions.

The difference between Semantic Web and World Wide Web is that, in Semantic Web, the data itself is part of the Web; whereas in the World Wide Web, the documents and not the data are part of the Web. Also, on the World Wide Web, documents can be retrieved but the interpretation of these documents has to be done by humans.

Semantic web processes information without any dependence on the domain, application or platform. The machines can not only process, but also act on the data.

Since it is almost an impossible task to overhaul web formats to cater to the Semantic Web, smarter software agents are being created that understand web pages better. The most important aspect of the Semantic Web is that relevant data from different sites is pulled up, thus extending the knowledge base.

Semantic Web is beginning to take off, and several websites, such as TextDigger, Powerset and Hakia are developing Semantic search engines, by applying natural language processing to search. The difference between these Semantic search engines and Google, Yahoo and others is that; while these search engines do not take into account words like after, before, by etc., the Semantically capable search engines take all these words into account and get back with the most relevant results.

Technology experts are unsure yet, as to how the Semantic Web will be of benefit to businesses and individuals. They are unsure as to how long it will take for the new Web to make its capabilities be realized. Keeping in mind the potential of the Semantic Web, it is strongly hoped that this new Web will lead to evolution of human knowledge.

Another issue that is being talked about is that in a world where people can publish anything they want, how reliable are the results of Semantic Web going to be. Since humans are going to be totally at the disposal of the new Web to provide information, without having to use their intelligence in searching for it, there are several issues that need to be addressed before this takes off. However, experts do feel that Semantic Web is certainly the Web of the future and will take off sooner than later.

Soon, the days when hundreds of links need to be searched to find relevant information are going to be left behind, as we enter the era of information retrieval by almost human-like machines.

Blog farming has been around for a few years now. For people who are not aware of what blog farming is - this practice is nothing exotic and just a collection of blogs that are created to get back links to the sites.

Blogs are created and populated with unique content and then they are used to build back links to a destination money site, which is an AdSense site.

People who are into blog farming aim at getting the seemingly invaluable back links by the “blog and ping” method. This is said to get the sites crawled by search engine spiders and the AdSense pages indexed quickly and into the SERPs. This method is also said to make the search engines immediately notice whenever content is posted in the blogs as well as make them follow all the back links to the sites.

Many blogs within the blog farms cleverly (or is it detrimentally?) use actual content that is available through RSS feeds from other blogs or from other free sites. With so many blog farmers out there on the Web, this means that if someone is actually posting unique content on their blogs, there is every chance that some blog farmer or some such internet marketer grabs (steals) the content and repackages it. These people may not even credit the owner of the content.

There are several ways these blog farms are created, but the most common platforms are Blogger and Wordpress. Blogger blogs are free to use and Wordpress blogs need a hosting account. Both are extremely easy to setup. The advantage with Wordpress blogs is that the user has complete control over them, as well as several themes to select from and other add-on features. Blogger blogs, even when they are self hosted are still controlled by blogger.

Blog farmers reveal that the key to ensuring success of the blog farms is to create hundreds or even thousands of blogs. People usually keep adding ten or twenty blogs to their blog farms frequently, although all of them should not be added at the same time just so as to not look suspicious.

The idea is to have as many AdSense pages on the net as possible, and here it means thousands of pages. Blog farmers work continuously at building and growing their farms and start seeing results when they have hundreds of blogs working for them all the time.

Many blog farmers recommend using automated tools to build these blogs to make the job done faster, as creating hundreds of blogs is no easy task and takes a lot of effort and patience.

The most important thing blog farmers caution is to not get down in the search engines list of spam blogs. If using Wordpress, then they suggest never using their default templates and using unique templates instead. Many people also use different identities on their blogs, using fictitious names and some even go to the extent of putting up pictures of different people, to make all the blogs unique and make them look real.

Blog farming entails working intelligently and planning a campaign to achieve the desired goals, without expecting immediate monetary reward. For a site in one particular niche, a whole lot of related blogs need to be created, for example for a health niche site, lots of vaguely related blogs, such as yoga, relaxation, exercise etc. are created. Then some keyword-rich articles are also submitted to article directories with links pointing to all the blogs.

However, these blogs are not linked back to the main money site immediately. First some work goes into getting a decent PR on these blogs, only then they are linked back to the main money site. There would be no doubt or suspicion, as the links are not coming from the same niche, but from related niches, as well as pages that already have a good PR. This makes these blogs look more real and not like some spam blogs created for the purpose of getting back links to the main money sites.
It would certainly look like spamming if these blogs were all related to health and linked back to the health site.

Another clever thing done by bloggers is to not add AdSense on these blogs. They instead have some other ads or affiliate links to products. Thus making the blogs look as natural as possible.

Creating blog farms is said to pay off in a good way, in terms of income from AdSense, due to the huge amount of traffic to the destination money site.

Experts in blog farming warn that this system only works for those that are willing to put in the required effort to see results and not those that wish to make money by just reading all the make-money content. The view on whether this is the right way of going about earning money is divided and it is up to each individual to decide.

Although, the major chunk of the traffic to the websites still comes from search engine users; the social media sites, such as StumbleUpon, del.icio.us and Digg provide highly targeted and relevant traffic.

Experts are of the opinion that it is highly possible that organic optimization and social media optimization are going to play a major role in the future of search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is the greatest tool that helps get targeted traffic to the websites.

Organic optimization means getting a high rank solely based on the merits of the website itself; such as the way a website is created, unique content that is placed on the website and high quality inbound links obtained without having to pay for the affection. It makes the search engines develop a liking towards the site and they show off the site to its users by taking it up on the rankings. Although organic SEO takes time and effort to achieve results, it is considered to be very lucrative in the long run.

If one has been in the business of doing well in terms of search engines for any period of time, they would know that it is getting more and more difficult to get good links that boost the search engine rankings. There are several reasons for this. Search engines with their improving algorithms are getting more intelligent in their ability to determine a quality site with good links. Search engines check the domain age of not only the website in question but also the domain age of the pages that are linking to the website. This means that collecting hundreds of links is no longer acceptable nor is it going to push the website up in the rankings, unless those links are of high quality.

How can organic search optimization be the future if organic link building is getting tougher? The simple answer is that non-organic ways, such as spamming or buying links is even harder these days than when done organically.

Social media optimization is a newly coined term and has been claimed as the next big thing for some time now. The social media websites, such as YouTube, MySpace, Digg and the others enjoy a huge unprecedented popularity. Social media optimization means encouraging others to promote the website with the links. These sites have the power to send thousands of visitors to the site in just a few hours as well as improve search engine rankings. Even the search engines are beginning to recognize social media as a wonderful SEO factor and placing a lot of weight on the social media optimization of a site.

Social media sites are where communities are built and these are the best places to spread a marketing message easily, which is almost similar to word-of-mouth. However, one has to understand that social media optimization is pull marketing and it has to happen because people like what they see and are attracted to the website, and cannot be forced upon anyone.

The concept behind SMO is to optimize a website so that it gets linked to easily and gets more visibility in social media searches. This can be achieved by being part of a community, as social media is a two-way street. Several experts believe that SMO totally relies on getting the content to travel and just making changes to a site is not enough; the content has to be portable, in the form of video files, PDFs and audio files. This can be achieved by submitting them to sites that help in taking the content further and bring links back to the site.

SMO is growing, with new tools are being introducing continuously. The reason this has taken off in such a big way is because it focuses on a website or a blog that already exists and does not require redesigning. Optimizing an already existing site makes sense. Another factor that is found to be convenient is that anyone can implement SMO on their websites or blogs and one does not need to be a pro. There are several other reasons why SMO is gaining in popularity.

There are two things that the future of the web is going to depend on: the content on the website and the ease at which this content is made available to the web browsers. Users look for quality content and a website that produces relevant content is certainly predicted to get great mileage in the future. Search engines need good content and will continue to do so.

The SEO think tank has it all figured out and say that as more and more websites compete for top rankings, websites with unique content, fostering links and driving traffic will have an edge in the future.

Google shares had dropped to an all time low and the report by comScore, the research firm, says that the reason is that there were less number of people clicking on Google ads this year in comparison to last year.

Analysts feel that the comScore report is a sign that Google, which is not in the habit of forecasting its future performance, is as vulnerable to the United States economic situation as the others, and certainly not impervious to the slowdown. According to one of them, “There are pretty strong signals now that the economic slowdown is having impact on consumers’ behavior online and therefore having a negative impact on Google.”

Wall Street analysts say that apart from the economy pulling it down, Google may be facing other issues such as perhaps getting too big to be able to gain any more market share, spending more than it can afford to, as well as facing major competition from the possible merger of the two chief rivals, Yahoo and Microsoft.

As of now, Google is still a highly profitable company that is out-performing all its major competitors. Google’s share in the United States online advertising market increased from 19% in 2005 to 28% in 2007.

Majority of Google’s earnings come from text ads, for which it gets paid only when users click on these ads. It is also pointed out that the unexpected decrease in the paid clicks reported by comScore could very well be the result of a conscious effort on the part of Google to ensure long-term benefit.

Some analysts feel that a part of the problem is self created by Google, because Google has reduced the area that can be clicked in the text ads, to ensure there are no accidental clicks. These accidental clicks used to earn Google revenue but they are of no value to the advertisers. This step towards helping the advertisers, seems to have proven costly for Google.

Recently, there were other measures taken by Google to improve the usefulness of its ads in order to attract better advertisers. For example, it ended all the contracts with websites whose main purpose is to carry ads that users are sent to when they type a wrong web address, as those ads give poor results for marketers.

Researchers say that most high-level marketers usually base their search advertising budgets on the value the clicks, in terms of providing leads or leading to conversions and certainly not on the number of clicks they get. They feel that if Google makes sure to weed out poor quality clicks, good advertisers will be willing to pay more per click.

Amidst all these theories, there are some people who go as far as to question the accuracy of comScore’s one-month report. Google’s chief executive, during a conference call to discuss earnings, made it very clear to investors that they had not at all been affected by the economic slowdown.

The positive thing is that, overall, no negative impact has yet been seen, despite the various rumors and predictions of recession in the future. A section of the analysts feel that investors are overreacting to data by worrying. They feel that the weakening of Google’s growth is inevitable given Google’s growing size, and nothing to be alarmed about. Google will also be able to gain the momentum in its earnings, if they cut their spending a little.

For the common user, the Google clicks continue to hold fascination and help in search of his pursuit for information.

You might wonder how both these popular giants are connected. EBay had acquired 28.4% interest in Craigslist in 2004, making it a minority share holder in Craigslist.

Things do not seem to be fine on the home front. On Tuesday, a lawsuit was filed by eBay against Craigslist, with the Delaware Court of Chancery, in the State of Delaware, which is a forum that resolves disputes between companies registered in Delaware.

According to eBay, the reason behind them filing the lawsuit is that two directors of Craigslist, Craig Newmark and their chief executive, Jim Buckmaster, have unfairly entered into transactions that have diluted eBay’s economic interest in the company by more than 10 percent. EBay alleged that both the directors have breached their fiduciary duties.

EBay is keeping silent on further details about the nature of the transactions entered into by the directors of Craigslist. The reason for the silence is said to be the confidentiality requirement of some of the information given about Craigslist in the complaint, which is filed under seal.

However, Mike Jacobson, eBay’s senior vice president and general counsel, revealed through a written statement that, “The recent actions by the Craigslist directors have disadvantaged eBay and its investment in Craigslist.” He said, “Since negotiating our investment with Craigslist’s board in 2004, we have acted openly and in good faith as a minority shareholder, so we were surprised by these recent unilateral actions. We are asking the Delaware court to rescind these recent actions in order to protect eBay’s stockholders and preserve our investment.”

Craigslist responded to this lawsuit fiercely by saying that the eBay lawsuit is “unethical and unfounded.”

Craigslist hit back at eBay through a blog post, saying “We are surprised and disappointed by eBay’s unfounded allegations, which came to us out of the blue, without any attempt to engage in a dialogue with us,” the blog post said. “Coming from a shareholder that views Craigslist as a prime competitor, filing suit without so much as mentioning these assertions beforehand seems unethical, and hints at ulterior motives.”

The blog post goes on to say that Craigslist has always meted out a fair treatment to eBay, the minority share holder, and will continue to do so in the future as well. They also said, “EBay has absolutely no reason to feel threatened here — unless, of course, they’re contemplating a hostile takeover of Craigslist, or the sale of eBay’s stake in Craigslist to an unfriendly party.”

With both, eBay and Craigslist flinging accusations at each other, only time will tell who is at the receiving end, whether it is eBay that has been given a raw deal or if it is Craigslist that is being taken for a ride by a minority share holder.

While Google has always been known for its superior search engine performance, Baidu is a Chinese search engine that seems to be winning against Google, in the search engine war in China. Alexa ranking shows Baidu as the fifth most popular site in terms of visitors.

Research shows that Baidu commands approximately 60% of the Chinese search engine market, while Google is said to command about 25%. China is the world’s 2nd largest search engine markets with 150 million users, with potential of increasing tremendously in the future.

People in China find Baidu better and according to them, it produces better search performance. Their strong preference for their native search engine is revealed through their advertising, which calls Google, the “clueless foreigner.”

Analysts feel that this could just be the spurious opinion of the loyal Chinese citizen. This fact is reiterated by some people who admitted to using it because it is Chinese. Studies and comparisons reveal that Google is a more superior and powerful search engine. Google presents a better experience for the user.

In a survey performed on both Baidu and Google, Google users found what they were searching for in half the time it took for Baidu users to scan. Baidu also does not clearly differentiate between sponsored links and organic search results. Then paid listings are given preference and organic listings are pushed down. Even the sponsored listings are not organized. For people used to Google and its perfectly organized results, this could prove to be an uncomfortable experience.

Baidu has often been described as “China’s Google.” This makes sense only as far appearances go, as Baidu certainly has the feel of Google, with the white home page and the use of simple colors, with a plain search box. These similarities are a deliberate attempt by Baidu to attract investors. Even the name Baidu is the same as Google as it refers to a large number, while Google is a mis-spelling of Googol, which means 10 to the power or 100.

The similarity between the two search engines ends there. If we look at the revenues; while Google made about $1.38 billion during the last quarter, Baidu had only $8.5 million to show. The reason for this is the fact that in spite of Baidu being the most visited website, the average Chinese have less money to spend and since Baidu also relies on advertising like Google, it does not get much in terms of revenue. Another crucial factor is that e-commerce has not developed yet in China and the usage of credit cards is not common.

Another reason attributed to Baidu’s success in China is the free MP3 downloads it offers. This is a traffic generating gimmick and is one of the most popular activities in China. Experts say that the search results may drop drastically if this traffic is not considered.

Although, Google is definitely more superior, it is left to be seen which search engine benefits in the long run in China, will it be China’s very own Baidu, the internet Giant, Google or search engines like Yahoo, MSN and others. Google is said to be at an advantage because of its educated and money-spending users, who have the buying power and ability to use credit cards online, which in turn attracts high paying advertisers.

Flickr, which was founded in 2002 by Ludicorp, is a digital image and video hosting website, providing a suite of web services with an online community platform. It is one of the most innovative photo sharing sites available currently and few other sites have had this impact on digital photo sharing as Flickr did.

Flickr until now provided users the facility of sharing personal photographs online, which can also be tagged and browsed. It has come to be a very popular website, also used by bloggers as a photo repository.

It has been a great hit with Mac users and Linux users, who have always been given a raw deal by other photo sharing sites that provide access to only Windows and Internet Explorer users.

Yahoo acquired Flickr in 2005 and integrated Flickr into the search results, when users search for images.

The latest news about Flickr is that they are venturing into online video and Yahoo will be shutting down Yahoo pictures in favor of Flickr. Current Yahoo photo users will be given the option to either shift all their pictures to Flickr, with just a click of a button or export them to other services such as Snapfish, Kodak Gallery, Photobucket or Shutterfly as well as several other options.

Yahoo will begin showing online homemade videos on Flickr. Users will be allowed to upload videos of about 90 seconds to go with the images. Although, the length of the video seems less, it is great to be able to upload all those special moments of life in the form of personal videos taken by the users. This facility will be available only to Pro members and not to free members.

The size of the photos is being doubled too, up to 20MB per picture for Pro members and 10MB per picture for free members.

This move is felt to be another of Yahoo’s tactics to catch up with Google. But with Google’s domination with YouTube, it is felt that it may be too late for Flickr to lure users away from Google. The general consensus is that YouTube has reached such great heights that it may be difficult for Yahoo to achieve what they are looking for.

Flickr, which may launch its video on Tuesday, is confident that their service will be better than most other websites featuring video, as it provides users the convenience of keeping their pictures and videos, all at one place.

“What we are doing is going to meet a huge unmet need in the market. Most people aren’t showing their personal videos at all right now,” said Kakul Srivastava, General Manager of Flickr.

Flickr has been very popular even before the launch of its video, with thousands of users trusting it with their personal images. The video launch just may be a good move in encouraging these current users to shift their videos to Flickr, even if it takes time for new users to take interest.

The idea behind the social networks is that they operate on many levels, right from the family level up to the level of the nations. They have come to play a very important role in determining how problems are solved, how organizations are run, and the efficiency with which individuals succeed in achieving their goals.

Previously, there were bulletin board systems to communicate with people and network with them. This changed and gave way to a more open and personalized system, where it is possible to connect with each other visually and in the most appealing manner.

You would have heard of MySpace and Facebook, which are the top two social networking sites today. Both are innovative in their own way. MySpace is extremely popular and it allows users to customize their pages, share videos with friends as well as embed music. Facebook took the internet by storm when it went a step ahead and allowed people to create widgets for the site. These top social networking sites make people feel at home and this is what makes everyone from young to old feel comfortable about using these sites extensively. It is interesting to note that MySpace founder, Tom Anderson ensures that his friendly presence is felt among the registered users and welcomes each new member of the site by making them his “friend.”

You must be wondering how these sites earn when they provide everything for free. Advertising! They bring in revenues by running advertising. These sites are great for advertisers as they can reach millions of people. These networking sites have come up with a targeted ad solution where the advertiser reaches people going by the user profiles and interests. This is what makes social networking sites a haven for advertisers too. If you have a product on “music” you wish to promote, all you need to do is to join one of these social networking sites and promote it to music lovers. Imagine the number of targeted visitors to your website.

There are many social networking sites that focus on business and allow users to post their career profile and look for jobs. There are other networking sites that are niche sites and cater to specific groups of people.

Social networking sites continue to improve in what they provide, in order to attract more new users as well as retain current users, which is no mean feat. People get bored easily and they are always looking for change and something new. Social networking sites vie with each other to do one better and this proves to be a benefit for the people.

Another twist to the social networking sites is the “social media” sites, where people can share news, personal experiences, reviews and favorite websites with other people. Digg, which is a social news site, allows people to select interesting news or blog posts. When a news item or blog post is “dugg,” by other users, it gets prominence in terms of placement on the site.

Because of the popularity of these sites, big companies have their eyes on them and they are being bought for enormous amounts of money. Recently, Bebo, another social networking site, second only to MySpace and Facebook was bought by AOL for $856 million.

The best part is that all these sites are extremely easy to join and this makes it all the more interesting to today’s teenager, who has no patience to fill up long complicated forms. They can add friends with the click of a button that says, “Add as friend.” Once this is done, they become members of the network and vice versa. Then they know everyone who is on their friend’s friends list too and that is how the network expands.

In spite of there being concerns with several reports of sexual predators and safety issues and although this led to them tightening their policies and security guidelines, social networking sites continue to rise in popularity because of the huge number of people with varied interests that can be reached.