As of the Summer of 2012, there are hundreds of Social Media/Networking sites available on the Internet.

Many of these websites have niche audiences that are hyper-focused on an industry or an interest. These are great places for certain industries to concentrate their efforts. Much of the content on these site are User Generate Content. The audience is an active and important part of the experience. By sharing their thoughts, photos and experiences, the users themselves help shape a visitor's opinion of a business, destination or place of interest.

An example would be the food industry. Restaurants, foodies, travelers and caterers really engage in sites like Yelp, Urban Spoon and Trip Advisor. These sites attract a large audience of people who spend time, energy and money eating out so engaging with them can be very beneficial to the food service industry.

Popular Social Networking Sites as of January 2013

		◊ Facebook is a social networking website launched in February 2004 and operated now as a public company as of May 2012. Users can add people as friends and send them messages and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Facebook.com
		◊ LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. LinkedIn has over 80 million registered users, spanning more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. The site is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. Linkedin.com.
		◊ Twitter is a social networking and microblogging services that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text- based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Since late 2009, users can follow lists of authors instead of following individual authors. All users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, external applications (notably including those developed for smartphones), or Short Message Services (SMS). The website currently has more than 150 million users worldwide. Twitter.com
		◊ YouTube is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos. In November 2006 YouTube, was bought by Google for $1.65 billion, and now operates as a subsidiary of Google. The company is based in San Bruno, California and uses Adobe Flash Video technology to display a wide variety of user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV clips, and music videos as well as amateur content such as video blogging and short original videos. Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, although media corporations including CBS, the BBC, VEVO and other organizations offer some of their material via the site, as part of the You Tube partnership program. You Tube is also the second largest search engine behind Google. YouTube.com
		◊ Flikr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web service suite and online community created by Ludicorp and later acquired by Yahoo. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to host images that they embed in blogs and social media. Flikr.com
		◊ Yelp is a Web 2.0 company that operates a social networking, user review and local search website of the same name. Over 31 million people access Yelp's website each month putting it in the top 150 of U.S. Internet web sites. Yelp.com
		◊ Photobucket is an image hosting, video hosting, slideshow creation and photo sharing website. It was founded in 2003 by Alex Welch and Darren Crystal and received funding from Trinity Ventures. It was acquired by Fox Interactive Media in 2007. In December 2009, Fox's parent company, News Corp, sold Photobucket to Seattle mobile imaging startup Ontela. Photobucket has over 100 million registered users. Photobucket.com
		◊ Google Plus is a social networking site interwoven with the Google platform. Users are able to share images, videos and content updating and share with their 'circles' and others. The site has not lived up to expectations. Google.com
		◊ Digg is ais a social news website. The site's cornerstone function consists of letting people vote stories up or down. called digging and burying, respectively. Many stories get submitted every day, but only the most Dugg stories appear on the front page. Digg's popularity has prompted the creation of other social networking sites with story submission and voting systems. Digg.com
		◊ Foursquare is a location-based social networking website, software for mobile devices and also a game. User's 'check-in' at venues using a mobile website, text messaging or a device-specific application. They are then awarded points and sometimes 'badges'. Local businesses are then able to provide discounts or FREE offers to their customers who check-in in a variety of ways such as Swarm, Friends, Flash and Newbie. Foursquare.com
		◊ Pinterest is a social networking website that uses photographs as its main form of sharing. Users can 'Pin' photos to the boards and then share them with their followers. Pinterest.com