In the last year, MySpace, which lets members include blogs on their personal pages, surpassed Google's Blogger as the top social-networking site by Nielsen's measure in the United States. In May
2006, Blogger had 20 million unique visitors, up 67 percent from May 2005. In contrast, MySpace drew 42 million unique visitors in May, up 329 percent from the same period a year ago, according to
Nielsen. According to Google, it has not abandoned any of its social networking services, which include Blogger, Orkut, and Google Video. "Where it makes sense, Google continues to integrate its
products to provide the best user experience possible, as with Gmail and Google Talk, for example," an unnamed spokesperson told CNET in an e-mail. Perhaps Google is biding its time, as nary a social
network has reeled in big money despite having massive usage. Some onlookers still refer to them as fads. Most recently, Microsoft and Yahoo, with sites like MSN Spaces and Yahoo Answers, have shown
that social services can drive display and search-related advertising when added to other services like instant messaging.
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