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It's been a couple of years since Google launched its first attempt at a social network. Called Google Buzz, its launch was hampered by the decision to automatically join everyone with a Gmail account, whether they wanted to be part of it or not. Google hasn't formally scrapped Buzz but it's not looking in rude health with last year's launch of Google+.

Another network to launch recently is the picture-based Pinterest. So is this going to be the next Facebook or is it more likely to finish like last year's launch of the specialist 'question and answer' service Quora - a whole load of fuss followed by, well, not much?

This article isn't an attempt to say who the winners will be in the social media race (if indeed there is an end point). Rather it will explain some of these new networks and offer tips on what to look for when you evaluate a new network and decide whether it's going to be useful to you.

Why is it special?

Obviously the first thing to check is whether a new network fulfils an actual need. Take Quora for instance, in which members ask questions and other people answer them. There was a lot of interest initially and indeed it's still going - but you have to ask, what does it do that Twitter doesn't? You can already ask a question in plenty of other places.

This doesn't always hold true. YouTube is widely known as a place that offers the chance to share videos. So was MySpace, which got there first - but its grip on the market was softening as YouTube launched. The quieter design also appealed to a wider audience.

This is where Pinterest, which enables people to highlight interesting images they've seen - with a link straight back to where they found them, comes in. This isn't, therefore, just a photo site but a links site as well. Yes, you can share visual links on Facebook in the same way but it's not as exclusively visual. Whether the market will take hold of this longer-term is uncertain but at least the market has something to accept or reject.

Search engine optimisation

Another important element of social links, at least from the point of view of commercial companies linking their goods and services, is that external links coming into your site push you further up the search engines. This is part of a process known as 'search engine optimisation' (SEO), which does what it says on the tin - it makes a website search engine friendly.

An extension of this happens on Google+, Google's new(ish) network. Businesses can add a 'Plus One' button to their sites or to individual products or services they are offering, and people with a Google+ account can tap this in the same way as they would a Facebook 'Like' button.

So far this all looks like a bit of fun - except it's owned by Google, which also owns the biggest search engine on the internet. Google takes the 'Plus One' buttons quite seriously: the more +1s your service gets, the better the placing when people search on Google. For this reason Google+ is likely to be around for a while, although a lot of research shows people aren't conversing on it a great deal.

Which is right for you?

Deciding whether to join a particular network is an individual decision. There are a few questions you can usefully ask yourself before joining one, though:

• Does it do anything new? Earlier in this article I asked whether Pinterest was going to be the new Facebook - it's not, there is currently no vacancy for someone wanting to be a new Facebook. New networks really need to offer something different.
• If it does something different, does it appeal to you? If you don't have a particularly visual sensibility and don't take many pictures, do you really need a channel on Flickr, for example?
• Is anyone else about to do the same thing better?
• Do you actually have the time to do anything with yet another social network..?

Learn how to use Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites with the WebWise online guides.

Guy Clapperton is a journalist specialising in writing about technology as well as small business for several major broadsheets. He broadcasts occasionally on BBC Radio stations and reviews the newspapers on the BBC News Channel.

What is a mashup?

At the SXSW festival a few weeks ago, rock legend Bruce Springsteen gave a keynote speech in which he admitted to "getting inspiration", shall we say, from the work of other artists. He demonstrated by segueing neatly from The Animals' version of 'Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood' into his own song, 'Badlands'. "It's the same riff, man!" he said. "Listen up, youngsters, this is how successful theft is accomplished."

It's rare for musicians to be so brazen about it, but Springsteen was acknowledging an undeniable fact: that new creative ideas generally evolve from old ones. Borrowing, refining and rehashing have been rife for centuries, a magpie-like swiping of melodies, pictures, chords and textures. It grew more noticeably in the 1970s and 1980s; twin record decks allowed early hip hop DJs to mix tracks together and create their own sound collages, bands like the Art Of Noise started using digital audio in legally questionable ways, and when samplers became affordable the Beastie Boys cut-up techniques inspired a generation.

The copyright position

Copyright owners fought back hard in the 1990s, and those early records probably couldn't be made today; licensing the samples would be too expensive. But computers and more latterly the internet have heralded a new era of creative expression, where an almost limitless supply of pictures and sound can be easily appropriated and changed.

Mashups have become endemic, practiced openly by millions, seemingly in violation of copyright law. But are we wilfully engaging in criminal activity by modifying and then sharing other people's work? Or has the law simply failed to catch up with the way we use technology?

In the USA the constitution enshrines the concept of "fair use" - the right to use someone's work for the purposes of satire or parody. The vast majority of mashup culture could be considered parody; from the Photoshop contests on websites such as B3TA, to videos by Cassetteboy or Swede Mason, to songs like 'Newport State Of Mind' that satirised the Jay-Z and Alicia Keys hit 'Empire State of Mind' a couple of years ago.

But while the law is, at least in theory, on the side of the mashup in America, that's not the case in Britain. Copyright holders can still scare the wits out of people doing the satirising; 'Newport State Of Mind', for example, was ordered to be taken down shortly after it became a viral hit. Two reviews into copyright law in the past few years have recommended that "fair use" be introduced, and politicians such as Vince Cable have backed the measure. But it's still currently illegal. As is ripping a CD to your computer - and the majority of us see nothing wrong in doing that.

The future of mashups

The impossibility of fighting mashup culture seems to be leading to a shift in attitudes. Many people are choosing to make their work available under one of several "Creative Commons" licenses, which may permit downloading and tampering. Corporate attitudes are changing, too; last month saw Getty launch a competition called Mishmash that offered free access to the film libraries of Universal and Warner and Getty's own picture library, with a $5,000 prize given to the best creation.

Those being lampooned are also realising that the publicity resulting from successful mashups may not be such a bad thing. The famous Cassetteboy video of 'The Apprentice' won the approval of Lord Sugar, while the creator of Garfield, Jim Davis, gave permission for the book 'Garfield Minus Garfield', which features Garfield cartoons that have had Garfield removed.

Mashup culture is, by and large, a bedroom hobby, a labour of love, where no-one is really seeking to make money. Millions of people are engaged in it, so copyright owners have to pick their battles – and, unsurprisingly, it's the people who find themselves with a viral hit on their hands who are most likely to hear the knock of the legal profession. It's a strange irony. One day the law may change, but for now, perhaps the best advice to mashup artists is: "Make sure you're not any good at it".

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Read more from Rhodri about music and the internet.

Rhodri Marsden is a writer and musician who regularly details his fascination and exasperation with modern technology and the internet for both The Independent and BBC 6Music.