Online Social Networking sites are continuing to popup all over the internet, they range from teen networking sites to more specialized and erotic Social Networking sites setup specifically for the purpose of people hooking up. The more generic Social Networking sites are places where everything about the world is discussed from football to recipes. Some offer Free Video Chat while others focus on industry specific topics such as nursing or horticulture. Others provide the capability for people to browse profiles and pick somebody they fancy and start up a text or video chat with them. In essence Social Networking sites offer all, if not more of the functions that online dating sites can. In many ways Social Networking Sites have become the new dating sites.

There are three main reasons for this.

1. The first, and the most obvious is price, social networking sites in the main are free. Worldwide active memberships in social networking sites are thought to have exceeded 230 million at the end of 2007, which makes social networking clearly a mainstream activity. As social networking sites depend for their revenue on advertising, with click trough rates typically below 1%, to survive they must have millions upon millions of members. With the market dominated by a handful of big players, their membership volume can support a non-subscription based business model. As online dating is a niche activity, membership has to come at a price, making it an uphill battle for dating sites to compete.

2. "Check out my profile" is the battle cry of many of the social networking generation. Users spend hours detailing their innermost thoughts, their likes, dislikes, opinions, embarrassing moments, daily movements, and other movements too crude to mention. They customizing their home page with java applications and widgets until they are something they can be proud of and show to anybody who wants to look. And that's the second point, everybody is proud to have a social networking site, happy to show it off, happy to show the fruits of their toil. On the other hand, for many people their on-line dating profile is something to be a little bit coy about. Which in turn means that the incredible powerful viral marketing techniques are largely redundancy, resulting in a higher cost of acquisition for dating sites.

3. The last reason why social networking sites will kill online dating is the superior user experience. Many social networking sites offer ability to create groups that share common interests or associations, upload videos, and hold discussions in forums. Have a Video Chat with your friends or setup your own WebCam Community Forum. Geo-social networking co-opts internet mapping services to organize user participation around geographic features and their attributes. These capabilities enable users to communicate and express their interest and views in increasingly elaborate ways. This is unmatched by most dating sites.

Summary

It is projected that many dating sites will fall by the wayside, or be subsumed into bigger sites as they struggle to compete with the marketing might of social networking sites. Pricing, social acceptability and functionality make Social Networking site a far more effective way of meeting and making new friends and partners.