PURE SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES DON'T focus on a particular type of content. That is, they are not just for photos, videos or blogs, though they usually have the ability to create or share all those. The two big-hitters in this space are MySpace ( http://www.myspace.com/) and Facebook ( http://www.facebook.com/).

MySpace's demographic skews very young, and its primary (but not exclusive) draw is music. MySpace offers a rudimentary ability to customize a profile page with graphics, videos, a blog, a list of friends, and a few other things. Because of the fairly limited, user-unfriendly nature of the customization ability on MySpace, and because most people on the site are not Web designers, are not artists, and apparently lack taste, most of MySpace is ugly. The main point of MySpace is to convince as many total strangers as you can to be your "friends." The more friends you have, the more "cred."

While it's possible to use MySpace as a tool in the context of social network marketing, unless you spend a lot of time (or pay the fee to become an elite member, for a really nice-looking profile and other advantages) MySpace is basically worthless in attracting good leads or driving quality traffic. That's not to say that it can't be done, and I'm sure someone reading this is going to try and prove me wrong.

My recommendation is that you set up a MySpace profile, populate it with some relevant content, get a few hundred friends, and use it every once in a while. But it probably isn't where you should spend most of your time. On the other hand, if your dealership focuses on youth culture (stunting, freestyle MX, etc.), MySpace can be a great fit, especially for things like videos and getting the word out for any stunt shows or other exhibitions you may be putting on.

THE RISE OF FACEBOOK

If MySpace is sort of the sinkhole on the Web, what's better? Well, it looks as if Facebook may be the new king of the Web. Facebook seems to skew more toward college-age users, although recent reports indicate that one of the larger areas of growth is women in their 30s. One area worth taking advantage of on Facebook is the Groups. While perhaps not as plentiful or as populated as other groups sites like GoogleGroups or Yahoo!Groups or Yahoo!360, they are within the Facebook ecosystem.

Facebook seems to be pursuing a strategy of becoming an operating system for the Internet. It has something to do with the ability to create and deploy widgets and applications that use the technical underpinnings of the Facebook platform (known among the pocket-protected as an API or application programming interface). What this all comes down to is that not only does Facebook have a lot of attention pointed at it, it's also developing a strong technological underpinning that will allow it to evolve and grow. Facebook users are of a decent quality, the site has a lot of good social networking functions, it has technology that can be leveraged to create custom applications or features, and it appears that it's going to be around for a while. If I were to focus on one site, it would be Facebook.