Social Networking is constantly evolving, since its inception.

Many new ideas are evolving and many old ideas are being recycled. But, one thing is for sure. The Internet is littered with social networking sites. Why? Because the early adopters and many niche sites are making tons of money.

So, where is the trend headed and how can I capitlize on it?

There are some new trends emerging, such as what Zoominfo, LinkedIn, LinkToMeet.com, Meetup.com, and others have done. There is also CraigsList, PlentyOfFish.com, and others. They each serve their markets well. LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, and now LinkToMeet.com are preferred by Recruiters, while Plentyoffish and LinkToMeet.com handle dating very well. Craigslist is in a class all by itself, because it handles everyting; for free in most cases.

This trend of a combined site got Tom Psillas excited about launching LinkToMeet.com. It is a site that, combined with a family of other sites, does what CraigList tries to do, but better.

No doubt. CraigList is a great site. It's FREE. But, by being free, it creates the problem of attracting lots of SPAM and SCAMMERS! OUCH! LinkToMeet.com tries to avoid that by charging members who want to contact others o place ads, a small monthly membership of $8. It keeps away the prostitutes from the dating section, the scammers from the classifieds, the spammers from the jobs section, and the list goes on. Who wants to join a group and see all kinds of spam attached.

LinkToMeet.com is also addressing another issue that meetup.com handles poorly. Meetup sends out too much email, plus allows members to leave a group, just as quickly as they joined. LinkToMeet.com does not let a member leave a group for at least 90 days. This allows the membership to build up, especially on new groups. On Meetup.com, many members leave because they get spammed and nothing happens on the groups they join. However, on LinkToMeet.com, members get notified, when a minimum numbers of members have joined, allowing members to get more out of the group. Who wants to organize a group with only 5 mmebers?

The best part I like about LinkToMeet.com is the list of features that paid members receive. This includes free timeshare swapping, scheduling, task management, bartering, peer-to-peer loans, free auction listings, free classfieds, $5 Job posting (a bigee for me), and online storage of my bills, receipts, ideas. I can post an idea I have and then receive a list of messages with matching ideas. I can then choose to contact those members whose ideas picque my interest. Cool!

Let me mention that the paid membership features are by invitation only, as the site ramps up. However, I would register, so that you get put in the queue for an invitation. The site now has 2 million members. It seems that they add new features weekly. Each feature seems to go in the direction of where  Web 3.0 is headed. I would stay tuned.