No matter what you think about Social Networking sites, the success of the concept is not only an era defining moment for this particular generation, but will also have far wider social implications over the next decade or so.

Of course, there’s also a chance that in 30 years time Social Networking might look as ridiculous as shoulder pads, perms, Rubik’s cubes and only having three television channels do now,  but that’s an argument for another day.

The issue I have sometimes with Social Networking sites is that there’s an awful lot of content to digest and it’s sometimes hard to find the information I need quickly. So when 11 Lions was approached by a new Social Networking site that’s dedicated to football, I was intrigued enough to try it out.

I’ve been using the English version of BeSoccer over the past week and I have to say that I’ve been impressed. They’ve adopted a ‘one stop’ approach to being a fan that’s already been a massive success in Spain – as well as being having features that should be very familiar to users of the bigger Social Networking sites (creating a profile, searching for an encouraging your friends to join etc.), there are options to create your dream team, play a variety of games  and – arguably most important to a stats freak like me – BeSoccer has an incredibly comprehensive active database of World and European Leagues. For example, I’ve learned a lot about the Honduran Clausura this week.

Having translated most of the content from Spanish there is an emphasis on football from Spanish speaking areas and there are some admittedly minor linguistic issues. However, even without a working knowledge of Spanish (it’s fair to say mine is limited to ‘hello’ ‘goodbye’ and ‘two beers please’) BeSoccer is easy to navigate – although there are some links that direct you to content free pages – well designed and has a thorough selection of customisable options. For example, if you want to include the latest Premiership tables on your blog or website, you can select the colours and layout you want and the HTML code is autogenerated. Simply cut and paste and you’ll be able to see that teams starting with ‘W’ aren’t doing very well this season.

I’m happy to recommend BeSoccer to 11 Lions readers – there’s a very good chance that niche Social Networking sites will be the next big thing and as BeSoccer is the first football one that I’ve come across then it’s highly likely it has the potential to become incredibly successful amongst fans of all ages from all over the world.

So if anyone wants to find me, join BeSoccer and look for kingtrips29!