It cannot be argued that social media is the Web’s hottest trend. But is this trend really a fad? New data from Compete.com shows that every major social network on the Web lost unique visitors from January to February 2010. A look at the numbers:

■ Facebook.com: -4.32%
■ MySpace.com: -11.52%
■ Twitter.com: -9.63%
■ LinkedIn.com: -8.3%

Of course, the number of participants on these networks is still too high to ignore. But it would be wise to remember that social media is there to serve businesses, not the other way around.