How do you use Social Media sites?

Facebook, Myspace and Twitter are the leading social media sites. I never really got the whole Facebook and Myspace thing until about a year ago. Obviously I understood what the sites were designed for. I just didn't see the marketing potential.
With Facebook growing so rapidly it has become the perfect platform to be able to contact people in your chosen niche. There are around 500 million users and growing daily. With the ability to make seperate pages it has become a marketers dream.

Myspace I think has become more of a platform for teenagers. Of course if your niche is for young people then there must be real potential there. You may have different opinion and I would love to hear it.

Twitter the king of the micro blogging sites.
In fact where have all the other micro blogging sites gone? A couple of years ago there were several.

I like Twitter. I like the having the ability to send short to the point messages to a targeted audience. I have over 4000 followers on Twitter now, and this grows daily. The key is not to constantly send affiliate links, you need to interact on a social level as well. Once you start linking all these sites up, it becomes incredibly powerful.
So how do you use Social media sites? Is it a big part of your marketing campaign? Have you always recognised the potential? How do you see the future of these sites developing?

Andy Beveridge