Robin Hamman's coverage of the Blogging 4 Business 2007 conference in London provides figures from a study conducted by Microsoft and presented by Michael Steckler, Business Planning and Development Director at Microsoft Advertising. The study looked at UK users of MSN Spaces. It found that "ego" is the largest driver of participation. People contribute to increase their social, intellectual, and cultural capital. Their reasons for contributing are the following:

1. Keep in touch with family and friends (75%) [part of this is keeping up with the joneses who already have one - eg. my mate uses it, so I'll get one too]
2. Being "nosey" - 62%
3. Express my opinions and views (55%)
4. Meet people with similar interests (49%)
5. Specific reason, documenting trip to wedding, etc (13%)
6. It's a good way to date (7%)

70% social networking activity occurs in the evening, 37% of participants visit daily and 41% visit a few times per week. Photos, diaries, and music are the preferred content to put on user's own pages, and personal experiences, movies, family, and travel are what people want to see on their friends' blogs or profiles.
 
Tips for engaging with social networks for marketing, according to Microsoft:
1. understand consumers motivations for using social networks (ads on flickr for cameras are ok, for example, because motivation of users is photography)
2. express yourself as a brand (innocent referenced facebook from their own blog, linked to people who love innocent [1500 members] and also link to people who hate them)
3. Create and maintain good conversations (users expect a response)
4. empower participants (Fiskars: scicors that allow people to make crafts has a blog that gives users the opportunity to post their own photos of similar projects.)