Social networking sign-up rates slow down

Communications experts say they aren't surprised by at least one recent study suggesting the number of people signing up for social networking sites may have peaked.

The research suggests Twittermay belosing some of its tweet, Facebook could one day fall flat and MySpace could eventually become meaningless.

While networking sites such as Twitter are still growing atlightning speed the sign-up rate for new users has slowed significantly, according to a recent statistical analysis by RJ Metrics.

Websites helping people purge their social network sites have gained popularity.

While Twitter is still adding 6.2 million new users a month, that's down 20 per cent from its peak last summer. And only 17 per cent of Twitter users are actively using the application, said RJ Metrics.

The company's research suggests that while Twitter now has 75 million users, many of them are inactive, one-fourth of twits have no followers and 40 per cent of those who signed up for Twitter have yet to send a single tweet. The average twit has 27 friends.

The RJ Metrics analysis also suggested 80 per cent of all Twitter users have tweeted fewer than 10 times. RJ Metrics reached its conclusions after analyzing about 85,000 users and three million tweets.

University of Calgary communications and culture Prof. Maria Bakardjieva said the internet's social networking space is crowded and fluid, and what was in fashion yesterday can be out of fashion tomorrow.

"Once people realize the amount of work, attention, and time that has to be invested to build their profile, to constantly update it to be witty with their responses to their friends' status updates ... the cool-down effect comes in," Bakardjieva said.

She added that concerns over the security of personal information is scaring some people away from social networking.

"There is the bandwagon effect very very strongly expressed there," she said. "Later on they come to realize this whole business is over-rated and they are not getting very much in return."