Piper Jaffray's Safa Rashtchy, an Internet media and technology analyst, said the social network revolution is only just underway. That and so-called "Googlism," he says, will continue to drive the
transformation of the Internet. Rashtchy believes that social networks are poised to shape the future by replacing Web portals. MySpace, for example, has already surpassed MSN and AOL in terms of
monthly page views, but not in terms of revenue. The News Corp. site also added 50 million visitors in March, growing at a clip of nearly 250,000 users per day. Not even Google grew this fast, but
both portals and search engines have figured out a way to make money--lots of it. MySpace is still a very small source of income for News Corporation, and growing community-ish sites like YouTube are
still subsisting on leftover venture capital. Will the ad dollars come, or will advertisers stay away, afraid of being associated with content that can't be controlled? Rashtchy says one growth area
that needs to be mined is social networks aimed at families, middle-aged, and even younger consumers, equipped with the decorum standards. All in all, Rashtchy says that online advertising dollars
continue to lag behind Internet usage in the U.S.; for that reason, he says content and communities should be bright spots for investment as that gap closes.
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