The use of social networking has increased by 21% worldwide, according to a Universal McCann Social Media study- Wave 3.This survey indicates that social media usage is up to 58%, with about 272-million users worldwide.

Universal McCann Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) surveyed 17,000 internet users in 29 countries, focusing on the evolving trends of social media. The findings are as follows:

Blogging: The blogosphere rivals any mass media in terms of reach, time spent and wider cultural, social and political impact. There are also major shifts into participation, pioneered by the Asian markets and now happening everywhere.
Brand penetration: This research indicates that MySpace is still number one among a broad collection of international networks with a 32% weekly reach. Facebook is second with a 22.5% weekly reach. However, in Asia a variety of local sites like QQ, Cyworld and Mixi dominate in home markets, while Orkut is number one in Brazil.

Things to watch in the world of social networking:
Niche Social Networks: In the face of the all encompassing mega social networks, a raft of more niche and sometimes exclusive networks are emerging.

DIY Social Networks: White label social network systems that you can customise are driving the emergence of a wealth of ultra niche networks.
Reputation Management: The survey predicts that personal brand management is going to be big in the next few years. Tools to report and manage your reputation are coming online; Wink.com or peekyou.com for personal search and reputa.com and reputationdefender.com for more sophisticated management systems.

Zooped,Facebook, MySpace and other Web sites have unleashed a potent new phenomenon of social networking in cyberspace. But at the same time, a growing body of evidence is suggesting that traditional social networks play a surprisingly powerful and underrecognized role in influencing how people behave.

The latest research comes from Nicholas A. Christakis, a medical sociologist at the Harvard Medical School, and James H. Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego. The pair reported last summer that obesity appeared to spread from one person to another through social networks, almost like a virus or a fad.

In a follow-up to that provocative research, the team has produced similar findings about another major health issue: smoking. In a study published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, the team found that a person’s decision to kick the habit is strongly affected by whether other people in their social network quit — even people they do not know. And, surprisingly, entire networks of smokers appear to quit virtually simultaneously.

Taken together, these studies and others are fueling a growing recognition that many behaviors are swayed by social networks in ways that have not been fully understood. And it may be possible, the researchers say, to harness the power of these networks for many purposes, such as encouraging safe sex, getting more people to exercise or even fighting crime.

“What all these studies do is force us to start to kind of rethink our mental model of how we behave,” said Duncan Watts, a Columbia University sociologist. “Public policy in general treats people as if they are sort of atomized individuals and puts policies in place to try to get them to stop smoking, eat right, start exercising or make better decisions about retirement, et cetera. What we see in this research is that we are missing a lot of what is happening if we think only that way.”

For both of their studies, Christakis and Fowler took advantage of detailed records kept between 1971 and 2003 about 5,124 people who participated in the landmark Framingham Heart Study. Because many of the subjects had ties to the Boston suburb of Framingham, Mass., many of the participants were connected somehow — through spouses, neighbors, friends, co-workers — enabling the researchers to study a network that totaled 12,067 people.

When researchers analyzed the patterns of those who managed to quit smoking over the 32-year period, they found that the decision appeared to be highly influenced by whether someone close to them stopped. A person whose spouse quit was 67 percent more likely to kick the habit. If a friend gave it up, a person was 36 percent more likely to do so. If a sibling quit, the chances increased by 25 percent.

A co-worker had an influence — 34 percent — only if the smoker worked at a small firm. The effects were stronger among the more educated and among those who were casual or moderate smokers. Neighbors did not appear to influence each other, but friends did even if they lived far away.

“You appear to have to have a close relationship with the person for it to be influential,” Fowler said.

But the influence of a single person quitting nevertheless appeared to cascade through three degrees of separation, boosting the chance of quitting by nearly a third for people two degrees removed from one another.

“It could be your co-worker’s spouse’s friend or your brother’s spouse’s co-worker or a friend of a friend of a friend. The point is, your behavior depends on people you don’t even know,” Christakis said. “Your actions are partially affected by the actions of people who are beyond your social horizon” — but in the broader network.

In addition, the researchers found that the size of smokers’ own networks did not change over time, even though the overall number of smokers plummeted, from 45 percent to 21 percent of the population during that time. The researchers realized that what happened was that entire networks of smokers would quit almost simultaneously

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to sit down with Google and work out the privacy issues that caused Facebook to block Google’s Friend Connect last week, he said Monday.

“We want to talk to Google about this and see if there’s a way we can make it work,” said Zuckerberg at a news conference in Tokyo. He was in the Japanese capital to launch the a local-language version of the social networking site.

Google Gets Friendly

Google Friend Connect allows Web site operators to add social networking functions to their Web sites. Users visiting the sites will be able to interact with new people or existing friends from social networking sites like Facebook, Orkut and Plaxo. It’s the possibility of data redistribution to third-party sites by Google that caused Facebook to block access, it said last week.

“Part of the issue with Google’s Friend Connect is that when users grant access to Google’s product, Google might share their information with another application, or some part of it, maybe not all of it, without that user knowing. And part of what makes our system work is that people know exactly who they are sharing all their information with,” he said.

Zuckerberg contradicted Google Engineering Director David Glazer, who said last week in a phone interview with IDG News Service that Google had spoken to Facebook about the service prior to its launch.

“They launched that without asking us or talking to us about it first so we had no choice but to follow the rules that we had set forth for any developer on top of our platform and we followed them,” said Zuckerberg. “But Google’s a big player in the space and they make good things and our goal is to work with them to figure this out.”

Zuckerberg also noted that Facebook has had a similar service, Facebook Connect, available since late 2006.

“We think it’s good that other people are picking up on this trend now,” he said.

International Competition

Facebook faces a tough market in Japan. The number one social networking site, Mixi, has the market virtually sewn up with more than 10 million users, and some doubt whether Facebook’s top selling point, that people use real names, will appeal to Japanese users, many of whom only feel free to express themselves when hiding behind a pseudonym.

Zuckerberg hinted that an update to the company’s site for cell phone users, Facebook Mobile, might be coming for Japan and other advanced mobile markets.

“We have a mobile version of the site and that’s just a first version. We realize that in a lot of more advanced, technical cultures that phones are in many ways more important than the Web but this is just a first approach to that,” he said.

The number of people accessing the Internet via cell phones in Japan outnumbers those accessing the network from personal computers, so a strong mobile site is also important.

Social networks have taken the Internet by storm. Acquaintances who have not seen one another for years stay up-to-date on one another’s lives through the photos and stories posted on MySpace and Facebook, and new friendships can even be made via groups and message boards. Now imagine if these tools were not just used for social purposes, but also to educate investors and connect them with one another.

Sites such as BiggerPockets, The Flipping Pad and the Black Widow Network are bringing social network functionality to the world of real estate investment. Investors may want to consider the benefits that such networks can offer, whether they are new to real estate investing or are full-time investors who have been making deals for years.

BiggerPockets.com was founded in August 2004. “I looked around and there were a bunch of sites that…were pretty useful, but I felt these sites’ primary purpose wasn’t to assist people in their education. Their purpose, I felt, was to sell stuff,” Joshua Dorkin, founder and CEO of BiggerPockets, said. “The idea came to me [to] create a site where people don’t really have to worry that the main focus is going to be some sort of sales pitch; let’s create a site where people can…learn, network and make deals.”

Fear often stops new investors from taking the proverbial plunge. A lack of knowledge coupled with a fear of failure can be the death knell for uncertain newbies. Or, if they decide to soldier on without thoroughly educating themselves or knowing where to go for help, it can spell financial disaster. But new investors who join a real estate investment social networking site have access to insights from seasoned investors and can even meet potential investment partners to help them along the way.