There seems to be new social networks popping up all over the place since the recent success of Facebook. Both Yahoo and Google are rumored to be working on their own projects. I find it hard to believe that these networks will ever have a chance at coming close to the popularity that MySpace and Facebook currently enjoy.

These new services will have to find users who have yet to discover or decide on a social network, or they will have to entice people to leave their current network.

I believe the pool of unclaimed users who might be willing to join and actively participate in an online social community is quickly diminishing. Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn seem to cover the needs of the majority of social people. This leaves only the smaller, fragmented niche markets which won’t be easy to aggregate into a large enough user base.

This means a new service will have to convince current social users in other networks to defect. As time goes by this becomes more difficult as users establish firm roots where they are.

In order to uproot these people they will need to be offered new, really cool features that don’t currently exist. There is little doubt that companies like Google and Yahoo have the ability to create these features, but even if they do, chances are the talented staff at Facebook will be closely behind. The really interesting thing is not only are they competing against the Facebook staff, they are also competing against the 79,000+ Facebook application developers looking to add new features themselves.

It’s an uphill battle for Yahoo, Google, and others now. Not only are they competing against the Facebook team, but they also have to contend with the innovative Facebook development community that continues to grow. It looks like the best strategy is to acquire Facebook, not compete with it.