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Friendster. Myspace. Facebook. LinkedIn. Most likely, you belong to at least one of these (three for me).

The whole social media/social networking frenzy started with Friendster in 2002. Eventually, several eUniverse employees realized the potential of Friendster and developed Myspace. Now, the social media king (based on its Alexa ranking), Myspace is more than 100 million members strong and averaging an additional 230,000 new signups each day, proving the whole social media is continuing to expand.

Even with the industry expanding, could social media be reaching a revenue plateau? Or is there even such a thing as a revenue plateau when it comes to the social media kingdom?

Social media is forecasted to gross $1.474 billion in 2009, up 37.4 percent from 2008. Unfortunately, this expansion is nothing compared to the 60.8 percent increase from 2007 to 2008, or the 141.7 percent increase between 2006 and 2007.

Networks like Facebook have become a great source for public relations and marketing. With newspapers on the decline (paper wise) and social media maybe heading toward a theoretical plateau, what could be the next “craze” for the public relations world?

I leave this as an open-ended question because I am stumped and would like to hear everyone’s thoughts on the subject.

Oh, and Nicky, I agree with your thoughts on the word plateau.

Article Tags: Forecast | PR Tactics | social media

Filed under: Blog Relations, Client Relations, Interactive PR, Media Relations, Public Relations