When Does a Social Networking Site Lose it's "Cool" Appeal?

The term "social networking" has been around for a few years now, but what does it really mean to most of us? Recently Facebook has become a common household name, but before that it was Myspace. The latest trends show that Myspace has lost it's "cool" appeal. Despite what Myspace CEO's may say, the reality is that it just became cluttered with ad's and virus prone personalized profiles, full of animated gif's and flash. I can attest... At one point I though my flash savvy Myspace profile was pretty slick, but then it became too customized. So much in fact that these custom profiles were full of ad's embedded in the code that the average user wouldn't even know how to get rid of. These profiles simply became "uncool". The proof is in the pudding. In a recent article you can read about how MySpace slashes its staff in half!

I've had a Facebook account for about 3 years now and I've noticed personally, that it's slowly becoming "uncool" as well. Yeah, it may not be this cluttered, personalized mess like a Myspace page which basically replicates the typical website from the late '90's, but, is it still "cool"? If a personal social site is becoming ridden with games, ad's and callouts to parents, grandparents and other family members, does it still maintain it's appeal? According to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook was originally created to post status updates and photo's... true "social networking". Now it's farmville invites, mafia wars, privacy issues and photos of children and families.

You, however, may not be on Facebook because it's cool... you may strive to have the best farm, or the strongest mafia. You may have never left Myspace! Who knows? My point is that I believe we have all seen trends occur in social networking sites that dilute the "cool" appeal and I believe we are slowly seeing that with Facebook as well. So what's next?