Social networks have been growing at an extraordinary rate over the last couple of years. The big contest has been between Facebook and MySpace and recently Facebook was reported to have caught up with its older rival. These two social networking giants aim to be walled gardens where users can chat, exchange photos, share music, take quizzes and (more bizarrely) turn each other into virtual vampires.
A more minimalist approach is the microblog. Twitter pioneered the idea of the microblog, asking its users the question “what are you doing”, a question to be answered in 140 characters or less. You are also able to “follow” other twitter users, tracking their posts (or “tweets”) and they may choose to follow you back. Twitter has been growing rapidly over the last year (see chart below) and recently exceeded two million registered users and countless other sites are now following hot on their heels, including jaiku, pownce, identi.ca and kwippy.