When you hear the term “Social networking”, there are some websites that may immediately come to mind. Although there are hundreds of social media, social bookmarking and social networking websites out there, the top social networking sites dominate a much larger part of the internet than all the others combined. Here is a brief look at some of the top social networking sites and what they offer to their users.

MySpace – MySpace, available at www.myspace.com is the first website that comes to mind when the term “social networking” is brought up. MySpace is one of the original social networking websites, and it has an enormous base of users, making it one of the top social networking sites. MySpace connects users who share interest in music, books, television shows, videos, pictures and profiles. Users can maintain a list of friends, a gallery of images, a personal profile, and comments and other forms of communication in order to network, and keep in touch with people all over the world.

Although MySpace is looked upon as a networking site for young people, more than one internet business has come from this heavily trafficked web site. It’s one of those places where it’s imperative to stay within the terms of service of the site. However, with a little thinking out of the box, you can take advantage of the marketing opportunities presented by MySpace.

How about another one of the top social networking sites; Twitter – Another popular social networking medium that is conjured when social networking is mentioned, Twitter (www.twitter.com) brings about a completely unique form of networking called micro-blogging. Micro-blogging involves creating updates in micro-format. Subscribers to your Twitter feed can keep up with your micro blogging updates throughout the day much in the same way that they would with an RSS feed or a standard blog, only the micro format makes writing in a Twitter account much easier than other forms of blogging and social networking. Twitter even allows for mobile updating, so you can update your followers on your status from anywhere, no matter where you are.

You will find that Twitter can be an internet marketer’s dream. Yes! Like MySpace and the other networking social sites it takes a little thinking to take advantage of every marketing opportunity presented there. The really great thing about it is these people that follow you and you follow are very targeted potential customers for you.

In addition to Twitter and MySpace as the top social networking sites it’s impossible not to think of the following three to use for your internet marketing:

Facebook – Facebook (www.facebook.com), like MySpace, is a large scale social networking site that is known for providing many different avenues for communication and community facilitation. Facebook offers a lot of unique applications and games that make networking even more enjoyable among friends, business associates, colleagues and family members, making Facebook one of the top social networking sites online to date.

Livejournal – Livejournal, found at www.livejournal.com, is a blogging platform social networking site, which means that the community and communication facilitated is all based around blogging. Each user has a blog account, and users can join communities and leave comments in other blogs or journals in order to network with users from all over the world.

Flickr – Flickr, which you will find at www.flickr.com, is a unique form of social networking because it revolves around photo sharing. Users create accounts and fill them with their favorite photos, and other users can leave comments. Flickr photos can be commented on, tagged, edited and shared, facilitating communication and networking purely through photography.

Digg – Digg, found at www.digg.com, is another unique form of social networking that revolves around sharing media and news with other users in the community. Digg focuses on allowing users to unveil news and other media, allowing other members to comment and rate the media based on popularity. The more users “Digg” a certain piece of media or news, the more popular it will become within the community!

These top social networking sites are not the only ones on the Internet. But if you’re looking for a way to market yourself and your products they make a great tool and the price is just right: $0