Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn are using disruptive technologies to do their business.  Web accessible Social Media is a trend that has become superior in the social networking work.  Newsletters, web pages, instant messaging groups, and email groups have been almost virtually replaced with the growth of social media.  With social media becoming popular so quickly and people joining in to the trend so freely, there are a number of business challenges social networking sites.  Social networks must decide what roles they want to play in the market and make sure that they are serving their desired members and appealing to the potentially new ones.  LinkedIn for example is a professional social networking site so they are challenged with making sure that their social media site remains professional.  Sites such as MySpace have already faced their biggest challenge and that is another market player (Facebook) stealing their place in the market.  For sites such as Facebook who are currently the standard in online social media they must be sure to stay on the cutting edge of innovation in social media to keep members from going elsewhere.

Social networks have many characteristics.  In terms of what we are used to today they are an online organization which allows members to collaborate and share information.  They also allow members to use some of the latest trends to cross geographical boundaries and alleviate distance to maintain and build ongoing relationships.  With this though does come some security issues for both individuals and organizations at large.  Social media users may feel safe behind their laptops, tablets, and handheld devices but by exposing to much information on social media sites individuals can put themselves at risk in a number of ways.  Organizations also face many potential security risks such as employees discussing confidential information in open context on a social media site.

Some of the more current Social Networking trends include more group communication and expression, such as organizations displaying daily activities on their Facebook page or individuals tweeting their current thoughts.  Individuals feel comfortable expressing themselves in social networks and organizations have found this to be a great way to make their presence as well.   For social networking sites to continue to grow through and increase revenue they will need to come up with ways to allow users and organizations to freely use their sites while still collecting revenue.  One way of doing this could be to sell data storage areas to users and organizations where they could store large amounts of data and documents on their profile and share it with others.  Another way could be to provide a backup solution that allowed users to backup all of their photos to a safe data store or all of their documents to safe area.  These are just a few of the ways social networks could expand on areas they are already involved in and find ways to generate revenue from users.