How Many Social Network Sites Do We Need?

I keep discovering "social networking" sites that hardly have any members, even those that have been around for several years. And I don't mean industry-specific or niche sites, but wide open networks. Are they not marketing them, or are they just truly lame?

Another thing I've learned is that most social networking sites have a majority of fly-by visitors, and generally less than 40% regular users. So it would appear that many people are curious about the current social networking hype and go check out these sites, yet few of them find reasons to come back. Look at it this way, if a site claims a million visitors a month, you can bet that at least 60% of those are one-time visitors who will never return. Facebook and MySpace are solid, with 55-60% regular users, and 25-35% fly-by visitors. The remaining percentages are hard-core users who are on every single day.

I'm assuming in the next year or two there will be a purging of these sites, where a few of the successful ones will buy the decent smaller ones, and the others will simply disappear because they never worked. Just like tech companies in 2000, and banks in 2009.

FTP software: FileZilla is free and works great

If you need a great ftp program, FileZilla is working for me just fine. I'd heard of it years ago, but was already using Ipswitch with no problems. Since then, I've changed hard drives a few times, rebuilt a few computers, and long story short, I needed some ftp software for my newest computer.

After a predictable search for free stuff on CNET, I learned that FileZilla was still king of the hill in that category. After downloading it and using it on my main computer, I also installed it on my secondary computer where I do most of my graphic design. This saves me from having to transfer those files to my main computer to upload to my sites.

Frequently it seems ftp programs are described as useful for uploads to YouTube and other sites, which I honestly don't understand, since those sites have their own systems for uploading. Regardless, I only use ftp to upload files into directories of sites I've built on my server. FileZilla is free, yet has all the elements found in other programs costing $49. I definitely recommend it.