Social networking ‘at same stage as Google pre-AdSense’

Social networking is at the stage as Google before it developed AdSense, it has been claimed.

According to Tim Houghton, managing director of New Media Intelligence, social networking is similar to the search engine company in that there are some top services and people love it but it has not been figured out how to make money from it.

He admitted that there is a risk social networks will alienate their existing individual users as they look to monetise the service they provide.

At Google “they didn’t have a business model, they just had a great search engine to start with and I think with social networking sites we’re at a similar stage,” Mr Houghton explained.

He said that some social networking sites will overcome the problem and generate some revenue but he added that they have not yet done it.

New Media Intelligence is a tailored web monitoring firm.