There has been a 5% slowdown in new UK users to the larger social networks, Facebook and MySpace, between December 2007 and January this year.

Alex Burmaster, an analyst at Nielsen Online which compiled the figures showing the decline, says: “The slow down in social networks is being somewhat exaggerated. It’s a natural form of any growth that we see in the online eco-system.

“Something starts from a very small base and grows very quickly. It becomes popular, but then it’s only natural at some point that the growth has to stop, because it cannot carry on growing at that rate, because there is only so many people it can grow into.” (Full BBC story)

I asked this question on LinkedIn three weeks ago but I guess I posted in the wrong location as I didn’t get even one answer.

Q: How do you drive cultural change using a social networking site? Just launched a social networking site for accountants IT Counts, with the first mini-community focusing on IT and accounts, hence the question.

So I’ve had a quick think and come up with two brain-stormed starting points:

1. Ten Common Objections to Social Media Adoption and How You Can Respond

2. More on Obama’s Use of the New Web