Reaching Digital Saturation?

Social networking is a "product" like any other: it has a product adoption curve that eventually will flatten.

At some point, nearly every customer or user who wants that product already uses it. At some point, the people who refuse to use a product are "never nevers."

They never have used or liked a particular product, and never want to use it.

Forrester Research analyst Augie Ray says we already are nearing a point where social networking is going to be mature, in terms of user base. In part, he rests his argument on the fact that social networking takes time, and there's just not enough time for most people to spend time with multiple social networking sites when Facebook, for example, has become so dominant.

Some people might say that is an example of "network effect," where any single network becomes more valuable as additional users are added. But the other potential insight is that many "digital" products reach saturation at levels far from "100 percent."

Apparently, only 71 percent of people use search engines and only 33 percent use instant messaging. One might argue that means there is lots of room to stimulate additional usage. One might also argue that there are some digital products that actually reach saturation at lowish to moderate levels.

The argument Ray makes is that social networking is nearing saturation, though only about 60 percent of people say they participate.