just catching up on this. i think getting everyone to participate is foundational. we have to get that to happen. but you are right, once that happens, routing stuff to the right people at the right time is going to be a big hard problem and mobile is clearly the better delivery platform for all of this stuff

fred

RBK (two above) has made an interesting hypothesis about the future of social networking drifting towards more niche, cohort focused sites. I would like to emphasize a point made by rbk, that in order for more niche sites to compete with Facebook (FB) they will have to develop something unique, offer something different than FB. Furthermore, I think that these sites will have to be very aware of the applications/features there users like.

One way I foresee sites being able to do this is through SaaS metering. There are a few companies I have heard of, such as eVapt, that offer such services with enough detail to be valuable. Do you know of any other resources that social networking and SaaS companies in general can use to better compete with FB and established sites.

But I will say this. Some people above hit close to the right answer. Niche communities. Off line. And a high value. And when i say high value, i am not talkign about a place where you go and show people your pics and communicate. /yawn. But to cater to a sector that dwarfs all social networks put together who do not currently know how to connect themselves with this new social boom is my answer.

Ann said, why would my 50 year old mom want to come on? That question has burned into my mind for a year now and now I know. And no, it’s not to catch up on all the “Murder She Wrote’ episodes. What is it that she does on a daily basis or have a passion for? What does this 50 year old lady value? The answer isn’t specific, but in general and what she and all of you do every day. In the future online social networks will be more off line than you know and the reason why most of you tech people can’t figure it out is cause you’re in this online box and don’t know how to think outside it. Heck, you don’t even know you’re in it. – Think I am crazy yet? You will after I say this: The majority of business websites in the future will be a pointer page and will be 1 page big. New businesses won’t even buy URLs. Climb out of your box and think about the bigger picture. What’s generates more money, online business or off line business? What’s been proven longer than time, off line or online business models? – the older I get, and when it’s broken down to the simplest form, the more I believe that Bible verse, there is nothing new under the sun.

When I think of facebook I laugh, cause I think of Netscape. The next generation of social sites will have to offer more than just this value: Communicating with others and more than just this stream of revenue: advertising. (in general) Where is the stickiness in FB when that 20 year old golfer who is passionate about golf finds out Tiger Woods has his own social network and is on a few times a week to talk to people? Or when he participates on this gold site he earns incentive points to buy trade in to talk with Tiger directly or purchase gold clubs with. I don’t think he’ll leave FB all together at first, but he will slowly move towards his passion. Again, I laugh when I think of FB being so /coughs ‘web 2.0′. – I was apart of a online social network back in 1993 when they were called M.U.D.s. Old nerds rule!

So I say to niche sites, like the filming one mentioned above. You HAVE to offer more than just what all the other social networks offer (communicating with others) because there is no stickiness to that. And being just a niche will leave you vulnerable” for that niche who comes in as an evolved network offering value your customers truly want. Because news flash, and most of you know this, the stickiness value of FB is so thin and that is all they know. Wait till this next generation of social networks come along and owns FB if they can’t evolve.

Best article I have read on TC in a long time, ty Mike. My nipples got hard when I read what you wrote: “The future of social media, I hope, isn’t in more tools to help us spew more content. Instead, we need ideas and technology that can leverage all this available online content (including status and activity streams) to enhance real world social interactions.”

My nipples thank you.

If we used a small fraction of our total creativity, I think we should be able to fund our info-products through a “crowdsourced” proposal/reputation system that allots federal funding based on (a crowd of) acknowledged experts’ votes. People will be federally funded to pursue their proposals, and then the results can be shared for free with everyone, since it was federally funded and it doesn’t cost anything to copy it. Then we shouldn’t have a need for copyrights or patents, since there would already be a system to fairly fund people for their proposals.

Besides funding info-product proposals, there would be enormous application for such reputation/trust systems, from helping with legislation, to solving the problem of oversight of classified programs.

sharing opinion is content spewing isn’t it ?

People who are not plugged in all the time will only become users of a technology if it can in some way make their life easier. For them, the computer is a tool, not a social medium.

(Personally, I signed up for my fb account less than a month ago, and only because there was a work-related subgroup that was using it. I had no reason to use it until them. Meanwhile, I’ve been online since 1992, before graphical interface to the web.)

Content spewingSo, who gets to decide whether social content is spewed? Scintillating? Worthy? Pontificated?Let me guess….

Instead of becoming connected we are becoming fractionalized and balkinzed.

I myself would be happy with one search engine where I could actually find what I am looking for with out having to sift through numerous pages of non related crap.

Ii would also like to an honest webwide ranking system that dosen’t rank the crap.

What good does it do me to accept and invitation to use a site that hasn’t got the bugs worked out and even when it does what is is actual worth? That has a help system that renders one who has not got the hours to spend time searching a help forum that will not answer the question.

And how hard can it be to come up with a real commenting system for blogs that doesn’t result in your blog doing flip flops and loading more slowly that even comcast can be held responsible for.

Despite the hype of MySpace and Facebook what rile do they really play. And then add the numerous of the social networking sites and who can keep up.

I am not a geek, however I know geeks who are totally frustrated with the current state of the internet.

It is not that I haven’t tried to learn because I have. It is that I can not keep up.
I can not play the game. I do not have 24/7 to experiment with programs that claim to meet my need but do neither.

I can not count the programs I have tried and trashed abd have bookmarked to try to further trash.

If somebody came up with an accurate T.V. guide for the internet with a ratings standard equal to Consumer reports I would scrap ever penny I have to buy at lest one share of stock.

Last thought: The internet is danger of becoming to time consuming to be of any real value other than an e-mail provider and even then your privacy cab but be guaranteed. I know people returning to snail mail for any really sensitive communications.

Their is much diversity in a rain forrest. but try and navigate through one.

Fred and Mike and Larry are taking about social media.

Jim and Sue and Al and Jake are posting pictures to Flickr and/or Photobucket.

257 of your friends are having dinner.

7,538 people you have never met and don’t care about are talking about what they did today.

I think you are missing a point. While Social Interaction is the goal of Social Media, there is a lot of “behind the scenes” information that will be generated to facilitate the interaction.

Automated location broadcasting is an example of this. When the mobile device becomes the center of the world, I believe that every 60 seconds or so, everyone’s gps coordinates will be broadcast to the web. A collection of ancillary services will turn this data into information that will facilitate social interaction.

For example from my gps coordinates, a “movie service” could figure out that I am watching Indiana Jones at the Arclight Theater in Hollywood and automatically twitter my “movie friends” shortly before the end of the film. After the movie I might have get a notice from a someone in Hollywood to have a drink at Beauty Bar to talk about the film.

It’s the automated creation of “social data” and subsquent processing of that data into “social information” that will make the interaction with my friend possible.

It’s not even that Karp’s postion is wrong – Saying that user generated content is pollution is akin to claiming that the a person’s nervous system should only send their brain sensory information that they aren’t conscious of. There is a lot of important information processing going on below the threshold of consciousness – It’s that Fred Wilson didn’t go far enough: we will each be continually producing social media data to make the creation of meaningful social interactions as likely and as easy as possible.

Joel

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