Social Networking a good business model?

Abhirst, please define your "social networking" site? I see this term used a lot and want to be sure we are speaking of the same things.

Sites like facebook, myspace, or niche sites like ravelry, cafemom...etc.

Most of the top social networking sites are "flukes" for lack of a better word.

Yes the founders put in lots of hard work, but for every MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc. there are thousands of similar sites (many of them better) that failed. Most of the top site owners admit that they never thought their sites would grow the way they did, it was just the right site at the right time with a little bit of luck.

For instance, Facebook was started by Harvard roommates as a way for students at Harvard to connect. Then it started growing as the media picked up on it and then when certain celebrities started using it. Basically these things that were out of the control of the owners.

I own a very large forum in a small niche that grew to larger than anything I ever expected only because the two largest forums in the same industry shut down and all their visitors gravitated to mine.

The key to running a social networking site or a forum is that you must have visitors to make it "sticky". No one wants to return to a site that isn't active. So you must first have a plan get lots of active members starting from day one. No one wants to come back to a dead social networking site.