Wikipedia defines a social network as “a social structure made of nodes (individuals or organizations), tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, conflict, trade, web links, sexual relations, or airline routes”. Maps of personal networks look a lot like Tinkertoy constructions with sites represented by round spools and contacts by straight sticks.

Your personal social network extends to the Internet and includes every touchpoint you use to communicate—email, instant messaging, text messaging, blogging, chat rooms, electronic auctions, file sharing, photo sharing and videos, to name a few. The Internet, far more than any other medium, has given consumers a voice, a publishing platform and a forum where their collective voices can be heard, shared and researched. "Consumer-Generated Media" (CGM) encompasses the millions of consumer-generated comments, opinions and personal experiences posted in publicly available online sources on a wide range of issues, topics, products and brands. Already, around 60% of the world’s online population visit some form of social network or blogging site. And brands such as Facebook and MySpace have become a part of modern vocabulary in a very short period of time.

For instants
What’s the appeal? For many, it’s instant gratification and the ability to instantaneously share a reaction or emotion or position (think American Idol voting). According to the Nielsen Global Online Study of more than 26,000 Internet users in 48 markets, the yearning for immediacy is shared around the world, just like instant messages (IM). Turns out IM is habit forming, with 42% of study respondents saying they IM daily, versus 12% who log in every other or third day.

Among the more traditional elements, some 84% of online consumers use email daily. Latin Americans lead the way, with 93% of consumers from that region accessing email daily. Social networking websites have surpassed the popularity of online chat groups. Latin Americans again set the pace, with more than one-third accessing sites like MySpace, Facebook and bebo every day, compared with 18% of North Americans and 11% of Europeans who do so.

Reel life
In the blogosphere, there are those who write, diarising their daily life (almost 10%) and those who read all about it (20%). In Vietnam, blogging has been elevated from art form to national obsession, with one-third of online users updating blogs daily and 46% reading them.

Online gamers fall into two camps—console (22%) and multiplayer (23%) aficionados—with players around the globe engaging at least weekly. Regional differences surface in gaming as well, with Latin Americans expressing a preference for console games and Asians gravitating toward multiplayer options.

Love connection
The Nielsen Global Online Study also discovered that affairs of the heart have become affairs of the hotlist, with 25% of Internet users looking for love online, and five percent eagerly checking dating web sites daily. Lotharios line up from every longitude and latitude, with almost one in four suitors hailing from Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa accessing online dating services at least weekly. Asia Pacific lags slightly in the online dating game at 18%.

The most ardent supporters of online dating hail from Russian and China, while North Americans and Europeans are significantly less enamored of the trend.

Social site scorecard
In March 2008, social networking sites in the U.S. attracted 86.7 million unique users, who spent an average of more than two hours per month interacting. The top 10 social networking sites in order of unique audience are MySpace, Facebook, Classmates Online, LinkedIn, Windows Live Spaces, Reunion.com, AOL Hometown, Club Penguin, AOL Community and Buzznet.

In the U.S., the leading social network sites on PCs are also the leading social network sites over mobile phones. MySpace.com, with nearly three million unique users in December 2007, is the most popular social networking site accessed over mobile phones.

Going mobile
A whopping 3.3 billion mobile phone subscribers, linked by global positioning satellites and wireless capabilities, are taking social networking to the streets. Some estimates hold that just over 2% of all mobile phone users already access social networks from their handset, a number projected to more than quadruple by 2013.

According to Nielsen Mobile, the U.S. and the U.K. are ahead of many measured markets when it comes to mobile social networking. About 1.6% of U.S. mobile subscribers and 1.7% of U.K. mobile subscribers accessed social networks on their phone in December 2007 and January 2008, respectively, compared to 0.8% in Spain, 0.6% in France and as low as 0.2% in Germany. In the U.S., 1.6% reach translates to 4.1 million U.S. mobile users checking their Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and other accounts on the go—up about 100% from a year earlier. These U.S. users average 10.7 visits over their phone at 10 minutes per visit.

Pan European mobile media data from Nielsen Mobile show that the most popular mobile social networking activities in Europe are sending and receiving messages (56% and 50%) and viewing pictures (43%). Users are less likely to use their mobile phone to add friends (24%), view or edit profiles (15% and 13%) or post blogs (7%) on their social networks.

Youth movement
Age is no barrier to social networking, based on the plethora of new sites known as “online playgrounds” that target users as young as six and seven. Kiddie demand to play on such sites as Club Penguin and Webkinz is prompting parents to set house rules for Web interaction and raising concerns about privacy and security.

Educators and sociologists encourage parents to make sure kids don’t spend too much time in the virtual sandbox instead of on the real playground with real kids developing real social skills.

Private matters
MySpace responded to critics by announcing its role in a 49 state task force focused on improving social network site safety. A seminal document outlined four categories requiring safety features: site design and functionality, education and tools for parents, educators and children, law enforcement cooperation and online safety task force.

Specific recommendations include prohibiting children 14 and under from creating personal profiles, automatically privatizing the profiles of 14–15 year olds, reviewing videos, images and content, and deleting registered sex offender profiles.

Riding the wave
Commercial enterprises have only recently discovered the social networking and consumer generated media phenomenons and are struggling with ways to ride the wave and leverage its power. In June 2007, Fox Interactive Media announced that 80% of its revenue derived from MySpace advertising, a whopping $440 million. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch was quoted saying that he expects MySpace alone to generate more than $800 million in 2008.

Companies should look for logical ways to create organic connections between products and services and key influencers; develop dynamic, value-add experiences; and incorporate social networking sites into media plans. With solid data-mining technology and Nielsen’s unrivaled experience in media measurement, services like Nielsen BuzzMetrics can help companies better understand the influence and impact of consumer generated media on products, issues, reputation and image. By listening attentively to the pulse in online “buzz”, value sets and hot buttons associated with consumer segments and how they differ across social networks can be monitored to help marketer’s better tailor marketing messages that resonate with users.