Social Sites Becoming Too Much Of A Good Thing

Aarica Caro is sick of sharing. That is, sharing online.

She has shared the lives of her cats. She has shared a list of her favorite television shows and movies ("Grey's Anatomy," chick flicks). She has shared her reviews of Bay Area haunts (two stars for the Old Spaghetti Factory in San Jose, five stars for the Starbucks in Morgan Hill). And she has been invited to share some more.

If you believe the buzz, the latest incarnation of the Web is all about sharing, connecting and community. Social networking sites such as MySpace and Palo Alto's Facebook have exploded in popularity, drawing new users into the fold each day. >>Full Story

Thoughts// A good article from the San Francisco Chronicle which raises the question of a social networking burnout. While the users featured in the article are certainly not representative of all social networking users, they do suggest that the wealth of social sites available to consumers is becoming a bit overwhelming.

Some of the attrition at these sites can simply be explained by users signing up to learn more about the service and then deciding the do not want to participate or just fading away. Of course, in the case of MySpace and Facebook, daily sign-ups are far out pacing this number.

However, the question is out there...with so many sites, major investors (who want major profits), scams and a host of other factors...how many social networking sites are too many? How long until the market is saturated? How long until there is consolidation (at least via profile) of these sites? Are the current group of social networking sites strong enough to remain relevant in 5 years?

Personally, I think we can start by consolidating catster and dogster into 'petster' (Don't bother looking up the domain name, I have already locked it up).