Increasing dramatically social media is set to hit revenues of $10 billion, research has revealed.

Worldwide social media sites at present are on course to reach $10billion this year. Including sites such as Facebook, these figures show that this would be an increase of 41% on 2010, according to technology research firm Gartner.

And the sites’ revenue are unlikely to stop there, with these figures predicted to continue increasing rapidly over the next few years. With growth thought to increase by 50 per cent again next year, and tripling by 2015.

Many analysts believe these figures will continue to explode, and that this is only the beginning of making money from social media sites.

At present most revenue is made from advertising, followed by online gaming which is growing dramatically.

Neha Gupta, senior research analyst at Gartner, said: ‘From a revenue perspective, the social media market is still in its early stages, even though it has a large number of users who, in some cases, are exhibiting increasingly mature usage patterns.’

To gain access to this revenue, Gupta suggests new business models need to be created. Where a transition will take place from simply clicking on an advert to sustaining engagement with online consumers.

Social analytic firms can help to ‘unlock’ data – ‘mapping lists of friends, their comments and messages, photos and all their social connections, contact information and associated media’ said Gupta.

However, as always the negative side to growing social media are the privacy issues. Wider use of this data becomes a major issue. With some online users already complaining about the way in which their behaviour is tracked.