Last reports I saw had Facebook at over 200 million active worldwide unique users (and growing) and an estimated $200m-plus in annual revenue in 2008. Pretty kooky to claim it'll be a failure, eh? Let me start by saying that social networking itself is a utility that is not routinely differentiated by any particular protectable intellectual property. It's a utility that demonstrates a better way for the online and mobile web audience at-large to connect with each other. But it's also a utility that ultimately threatens to be its own worst enemy.

Last year I wrote a blog post entitled “If the news is important it will find me”. The point was that we all live in so many social networks, that someone will send us an update if something in the world happens that we would be interested in.  Back then I was guessing.  A year later I have data. For the 1st time ever, more people are finding my blog from Twitter and Facebook referrals than via Google.  The total number of people coming to my blog is increasing. The percentage of people who find it via Google is declining. Significantly.

Los Angeles - Hollywood Actor and Producer Ashton Kutcher became the first person to reach one million followers on the mobile microblogging service Twitter. In doing so, Kutcher won a much-publicized duel with CNN to get to 1 million followers first. The hype around the service also reached new levels as TV-host and media mogul Oprah Winfrey sent out her first tweet on Friday.

Today is the fifth anniversary of the launch of Facebook, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to look at the website’s impact upon the social networking category. Overall, Facebook was the #5 ranked website by total market share of visits in January 2009. One year ago, visits to Facebook represented 15% of the total social networking category while MySpace captured 73%. In January 2009, Facebook’s share doubled to reach 31%, while MySpace’s total share of the category eroded to 57%.

Last week we provided the BBC with some interesting data illustrating how UK Internet visits to Social Networks and Forums have overtaken Adult websites. As the chart below illustrates, social networks overtook last October and have remained ahead since.

The inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States was a major event for US Internet users on Tuesday since many needed to rely upon online streaming on news websites to view the event from work. As one might expect, the Broadcast Media and Politics categories were the main beneficiaries from the Inauguration activities, increasing 33% and 53%, respectively, as compared to the market share of visits on the previous Tuesday.

Twitter has become a popular pastime for many who like to update their daily thoughts and activates, as well as for the voyeurs who just enjoy reading the tweets. Last week, the market share of visits to Twitter surpassed Digg for the first time since launch and was ranked #84 (one above Digg at #85) in the Computers and Internet category. A big driver of traffic to Twitter last week was around the US Airways plane crash in to the Hudson River last Thursday, driving many posts and updates about the situation.

With all of the focus on the economic downturn and the troubles in the retail sector, it’s easy to forget the continued growth of social networking in the UK. Christmas is traditionally the busiest time of year for social networks, and this festive season the sector achieved three significant new milestones.