Although everyone expected MySpace to rise from its own ashes, News Corp. decided it would be better to leave MySpace to others to manage. MySpace’s recent history might drive others to say social media is lingering beyond its days, but things must not be regarded in such a simplistic manner. MySpace approached its end by not properly responding to the fragmentation of the market in the way competitors like YouTube and Twitter did.

Social media is still topical and the recent events in Egypt add value to this. Twitter enabled civilians to organize themselves and carry out protests against tyranny. To add to this, Facebook and Zynga’s success perfectly demonstrate the current situation of social media that is welcoming an increasing number of users. Fcebook and Zynga are sharing at the moment over 50million users and the numbers are growing by each day.

This trend is replicated in countries with emerging economies as well. In South America for example, more specifically in Brazil Orkut is the most popular social media site and Mexico gives a lot of opportunities for newcomers in the social media sector given that only 25 percent of the population is connected to the internet.

In Asia, the nationalist trend is more obvious as these populations prefer their own social media environments to Facebook & Co. In Japan Mixi and Gree gather the greatest number of users, whereas in Korea, Cyworld numbers over 20 million users. Last year, in India, Facebook managed to overcome by 20mllion users long-time competitor Orkut with 19 million users. Even in China where the government controls virtual environments and not only via the Shield Project by banning Facebook and Twitter, national social media sites are extremely popular.

If we take into consideration the growing number of mobile users along with internet mobile, mainly accessed for social media sites, it becomes obvious that social media is hardly approaching its demise. Big data becomes the main point of interest for giants like Google, EMC, HP and so on. The stakes are too big for big data to big ignored: the sound revenues coming from social advertising give us a first clue on where is big data heading to.