If you thought social networking sites are only meant for poking your long-lost friends and meeting people with similar interests, you better think again.

With social networking sites taking cyberworld by storm, commercial establishments are planning to make huge investments for promoting their brands and products through them.

"While social networking sites provide a means for instant messaging to individuals...companies are planning to invest huge sums to promote their products using social networking," Manish Mehta, Chief Delivery Officer of IT services firm Mahindra Satyam, said here today.

Stating the companies find it "a lot more cost effective" to sell their products through social networking sites, he said, "Such sites also come in handy to bring companies that ignore consumer complaints to justice."

Mehta was delivering his inaugural address at a four-day international conference on 'Advances and Emerging Trends in Computing Technologies', organised by the Department of School of Computing, SRM University, at Kattankulathur near here.

Commenting on the Unique Identification Project (UID) undertaken by the Government, he said the project -- after completion -- would act as a "powerful tool" to administer welfare schemes more effectively.

"It will also help manage the problem of illegal information as well as overall security of the country better," he said.

Referring to the growth of mobile connections in the world, Mehta said the number of mobile phones in the world currently stands at 3.25 billion. Meanwhile, the number is growing by 1000 new phones every minute.

"If the same growth continues, we will have 6.5 billion connections, surpassing the global number of the adult population by 2014," he said.