I’ve been looking at a lot of web jobs lately and a good majority of jobs in the online sector are centering on building their social or community aspects. The web 2.0 explosion has morphed into creating the social web. Sure we all know about Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, and Linked In. But, a vast amount of online sites are expanding their current offerings to allow networking features for their core offerings. This social web is the hottest new trend that really is an expansion of the old message board idea that cropped up many years ago on the Web.

Behind the race to be social is a fierce competition to capture user attention. There are more than 135 million distinct sites on the Web, and the number of active sites is growing by a rate of more than 5% each month, according to Netcraft. With so many places for Web surfers to spend time, the challenge has become not just attracting large numbers of users, but keeping them there long enough that they’ll see a few ads and maybe even spend some cash. In July, Web measurement company Nielsen//NetRatings underscored the importance of this challenge by announcing that time spent, along with the number of unique users, was a key measure of a site’s popularity [BusinessWeek, 7/11/07].

Viacom, eBay and Yahoo are just a few that are pouring tons of money into the idea of expanding their social web. MSNBC ran an article recently talking about how to navigate the social web and there is a quote from Christina Norman, president of MTV that says, “Our audience loves to connect through shared passions, whether it is the music they love or the causes they believe in.” I like this statement because I do think it’s true that Web users do like the ability to engage in shared passions online. What’s your passion?