As technology advances, change happens more and more rapidly.  The internet is no exception.  The web has undergone significant evolution in the last five years.  The new types of internet sites that are garnering tremendous numbers of internet users are called social networking sites. 

The influence and growth of these social networking sites is sometimes referred to as Web 2.0.  Social networking sites or social media sites incorporate interactive content as their main component.  The user controls a significant amount of the content with the ability to upload content leave comments, vote on popular sites and refer their friends to favorite sites.

The reason social networking sites are becoming so important to internet marketers is because of the incredible amount of traffic that frequents these networking sites.  One study has shown that 64 percent of all internet users now visit MySpace.  35 percent visit YouTube and 29 percent visit Facebook.

That is an incredible amount of traffic.  MySpace is now getting more traffic than Google.  Yes, I said more than Google. 

With that kind of traffic, you can see why it is going to become more and more important to internet marketing.

Even more amazing then the current traffic numbers is the fact that the growth rate is doubling each month.  FaceBook is said to be adding up to 250,000 new users a day.

You may think that those social networking sites like MySpace are just being frequented by high school and college age individuals. A new study has found that currently more than half of the users on MySpace are 35 years of age or older.

The number of social networking sites is growing too.  There are more than 2000 major social networking sites now on the internet.  In the US most only have heard about MySpace.  There are social networking sites in other parts of the world that are as big in those areas as MySpace is in the US.  A site called BeBo is one of them.

In addition to the sheer magnitude of traffic to these sites, surveys have found that users that frequent these sites are more likely to purchase products online.  They, on average, spend 15 to 20 percent more online than other internet users.

One more reason that social networking sites are showing up on many internet marketers radar is that they are very highly regarded by the search engines.  Having a presence on some of these sites can sometimes get you indexed  by the search engines within hours.  If you have links on these sites, they are highly regarded links.

Social networking sites have become a major presence on the internet.  The amount of traffic visiting those sites is enormous.  The growth rate is also incredible.  That traffic is made up of users that are more likely to buy online than other users.  Social networking sites are indexed by the search engines very quickly.

Traffic, buyers, quick search engine indexing and valuable back links are all things that every internet marketer wants.  Those factors will make marketing strategies that take advantage of those features almost essential now and into the future.  As the influence of social networking continues to grow, internet marketing may indeed soon be called social marketing.