Social networking was the undisputed poster boy of the online world in 2008, finishing the year with a community representing 80% of the U.K.'s total online population. We would not expect to see such staggering growth in visitor numbers again this year – they are already there – but this is clearly still going to be an important space and a very real and tangible pillar of the emerging "Web 2.0" world that grew up in front of our very eyes last year.
What will be interesting to watch with social networking in 2009, is that this medium has largely established itself as the status quo now, in effect becoming the wall instead of the poster. With 57% of the U.K.'s total social networking community coming from the over 35 segment, and a user base spanning social grades and income levels, it can no longer be considered a niche that is the preserve of the young, or the affluent, or the Star Trek fan.
What you have now is a vast user base operating within a brand new medium that has been specifically set-up to maximise communications. It is possible that this huge audience will begin to fragment again, as borders do when empires swell, and seek more fashionable communities which they feel are closer to their persona. I would not expect to see people abandoning the Facebooks and MySpaces of this world - that would be like your grandfather abandoning the post office for love letters, fridge notes, homing pigeons, but there is definitely room in this community for both homogeny and diversity.
What that in turn would cause is an influx of smaller, more stylised social networking sites into the market, which of course is good news for advertisers looking to deliver more targeted messages to a much more clearly defined set of audiences.