Anybody else notice that we've been hearing a little bit less about social networking in the news recently? It's not your imagination - with a few notable exceptions, social networking is being discussed significantly less in the news than it had been last year - and Google Trends confirms that it's not just a figment of your imagination. According to Google's powerful trend tracking tool, searches for most social networks are down significantly - but does that mean that interest in social networking itself is starting to wane?

Social Networking Trends - Who's Up, Who's Down

A quick look at Google trends confirms some of what we already knew - searches for social networks like Myspace and Friendster are in sharp decline, as is traffic to those social networks and their average daily usage. Many analysts say that first-wave social networks like Friendster and Myspace are "past their prime" - and if searches on Google are any indicator, that estimation may be accurate.

Friendster

As you can see, Google searches for "Friendster" are at their lowest level since early 2007, and that trend is showing no signs of slowing down.

Myspace

The once-great myspace also is experiencing a downward slope in its Google searches, indicating that significantly fewer people are searching the internet for myspace-related information.

Friendfeed

Upstart aggregation service Friendfeed experienced a huge spike in search traffic after it was announced that Faceboook would be acquiring the Friendfeed service; however, almost immediately after news from that announcement blew over, Friendfeed searches resumed their previous (low) level.

Bebo

Bebo, the UK-based social network recently acquired by AOL, is also showing signs of declining Google searches. Even the announcement that AOL was acquiring the service didn't cause the same kind of massive spike in search traffic that Facebook's announcement of the Friendfeed acquisition did - not a good sign for either AOL or Bebo.

Orkut

Bucking convention, Google's Orkut social network isn't showing that many signs of slowing down in terms of search traffic. We're not sure if that has anything to do with the fact that the people showing the search statistics are owned by the same people who run the Orkut network - but however you spin it, searches related to Orkut seem to be pretty much holding steady.

But what about the big dogs, the social networks that everyone really wants to know about? Twitter users might be surprised at what they see in the Google Trends:

Twitter

From the looks of it, searches for Twitter are currently in decline, although that "decline" started so recently that it's impossible to say whether it's the beginning of a long-term trend or whether it's simply a momentary lull in searches. With a slew of new features slated for development and release over the next year, it wouldn't be outrageous to assume that we may very well see these trends begin to rise again. The more Twitter lands in the news, the more likely it is to see people searching for it.

Facebook

Facebook is currently the king of social networking searches on Google, and the only network to show consistent upward growth on Google searches. One thing is for sure - people want to know about Facebook, and they're using Google to find out about it. Obviously growth like this can't remain consistent forever, but we can expect it to continue growing in the short-term as Facebook continues to branch out into new regions and new languages and roll out new features and monetization opportunities.

The State of Social Networking

So what's the overall picture? Keeping in mind that these trends only show Google searches, and don't show any actual traffic to these sites or user statistics, there's only one thing that we can say with certainty: with the exception of Facebook, Twitter and Orkut, many social networks are seeing a dramatic decline in Google searches. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're seeing a decline in user registrations or active users - in fact, it might indicate the opposite; if people already know where to find something (like Myspace), they probably won't have to search for it as much. That doesn't explain Facebook's massive continual upward growth, however.

Sound off, people! Do you think social networking has "jumped the shark," as it were, or do you think this is simply a case of the best (Facebook) winning out over the rest? Do you think Twitter's already past its prime, or do you think it's just coming into its own? Will Myspace soon be gone for good? Only your comments, and time, can give us those answers.