Here are some indications that socnets – social networking sites such as YouTube and Facebook – are not going away anytime soon and yield much more influence than you think:

• A few months ago, NBC Universal announced sweeping cuts to its television operations in order to convert much of its content to digital media so that it will stay competitive with social networks, video games and other upstart media.

• The U.S. Postal Service has removed tens of thousands of underused mailboxes from city streets because as more people send e-mails and pay bills online, first-class mail has been drastically reduced.

• According to a Dow Jones VentureOne report, $500 million is projected to be invested in new Internet firms this year – twice the total of last year’s sum.

Perhaps this trend is most obvious in the campaign strategies of the 2008 presidential candidates. Each one has a Web site and a blog; that’s a no-brainer. But Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are on MySpace and YouTube as well.
John Edwards, the most visible presence on the Internet, is signed up in at least 23 socnets, including the biggies (Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, MySpace) and smaller sites such as Essembly and TagWorld. Additionally, he has his own networking site, John Edwards One Corps.

“What we have now is a new technology that is all about building relationships,” said Ruby Sinreich, an online consultant who works with nonprofits and writes the progressive blog OrangePolitics.com. He and Mathew Gross, Edwards’ chief Internet adviser, were interviewed for a Washington Post article by Jose Antonio Vargas about the political use of social networking sites.

Says Gross: “A lot of people are involved in some sort of online networking community, and going to Flickr, to wherever, is just like going to union halls and county fairs. Not everyone is on the same group – some are Facebook people, some are MySpace people – and we have to go where the people are.”

I have been blown away by the volume of comments posted on my own blog, Beyond Blue, at Beliefnet.com. Readers communicate not only with me but with each other, throwing out pieces of advice that have helped them weather the storm of depression and anxiety.

Sometimes all I have to do to answer a reader is to pull out the suggestions posted on the message board of a certain post. Beyond Blue has become a kind of online support group for persons struggling with mental illness and their families and friends. And people must feel comfortable connecting with each other and sharing their stories via the Internet, because my blog traffic (measured in page views) has almost doubled in two months.

As a blogger who is addicted to this new form of communication, I can appreciate why Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion, and why Yahoo! has spent nearly $100 million for start-ups Flickr and Jumpcut, among others.

If you want to go where the people are, you should indeed let your fingers do the walking, but not to the Yellow Pages anymore.

Therese J. Borchard writes a bi-weekly column that is syndicated by Catholic News Service.