Despite the launch of new ad formats, US social network ad spending will fall short of the $1.4 billion eMarketer projected for the category earlier this year—reaching $1.2 billion in 2008, and rising to only $1.3 billion in 2009.

Although social network advertising—banners, search ads and new ad formats—is not growing as expected, other forms of social network marketing—encompassing tactics such as customer communities and influencer outreach—are proliferating.

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Some 65 percent of business professionals are connecting via personal and professional social networking websites, according to a recent survey on online social networking conducted by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) - the erstwhile HRI - reports MarketingCharts.

The most popular site used for professional networking was LinkedIn, followed by Yahoo 360 and MySpace, according to the study.

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MySpace is the most popular social networking website with 140 mln members, In-Stat says. 30% of survey respondents pay for premium services or features on social networking sites. Respondents who indicated no future plans to purchase premium services on social networking websites cited expense and lack of desired services and features as the main reasons for lack of purchase. Less than 13% of survey respondents use mobile social networking services. Furthermore, the overwhelming response was that the use of mobile devices for social networking simply was not of interest to them.

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40% percent of MySpace users keep profiles on other social networking sites such as Friendster and Facebook. Loyalty among the smaller social networking sites is even lower, with more than 50% of all users actively maintaining multiple profiles, Parks Associates says.

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