Given all the buzz surrounding Facebook and Twitter, social networking applications have the potential to be viewed as just the latest Web 2.0 fad. However, social networking applications are neither new nor a fad. Internet discussion groups, which have been in existence for more than two decades, were one of the first online social networking applications. The Usenet discussion group system was founded as an experiment in 1979; today, it exists as Google Groups and includes a searchable archive of more than 700 million postings dating back 20 years.