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How do you see the future of social networking sites in terms of segmentation and differentiation - more services (horizontal diversification) or more narrow audiences (vertical segmentation)? Or something else?
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Emil S
Founder and Managing Director at Forschung-Direkt GmbH
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As an example for one of the trends in social networking I see Ning.com - a meta-network, which allows you to create your own site with complete social networking properties - personal blog, forums, comment walls, groups and subgroups, etc. At the beginning I was thinking that this is crazy and that it doesn't make sense to have a whole social network for a small bunch of people connected by a common topic (say jazz music), but after heavy usage of two weeks I found it to be a neat concept - the experience is much more personal and the "connections" are valuable. The Ning system serves the identity management and relations and gives away the infrastructure to create a community. A very different concept than the general purpose network like MySpace - I like the experience. Seeng Ning hosting good networks makes me think that this may be one of the future directions of the web.
One of the examples for a well arranged Ning site is http://classroom20.ning.com - a community site for teachers who use web technology and standards for teaching at school.
For new social networking sites I think only niches will be of value in the future. Websites like MySpace and Hyves (Dutch) are common good and are succesfull as they are. But in order to give the most (user experience) I'm sure it's inevitable to choose a segment whn setting up something new.
I wouldn't want to say that linkedin is a vertical networking site, but it's user audience is way smaller then MySpace's and its success depends on that narrowing down. I would even go as far to say that horizontal and vertical cannot be compared as they both have different purposes. Whereas horizontal networking is mostly ment to communicate to the masses like weblogs. People on a vertical networking site have a different approach and wish to communicate one-on-one most of the time.
I think that people are going to just get sick of all the sites where you just log in, add a bunch of friends and post a picture and a comment here and there. It's like Atari's Pong, it seemed so cool so many decades ago, but at best it's a fond memory now.
So, I don't think that social networking is going to be enough to keep people interested. Brands that have built themselves upon social networking are going to have to branch out. And, yes, diversification and segmentation will happen but probably not in the way you think.
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Robert F
Battalion Applications Trainer at US Army
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I believe something else is on the way ... currently, there is little available in the Open Source community related to social networking. Many of the most interesting changes seem to come from the Open Source community of developers.
Luis E. G
Executive specialized in business and product development for digital media with strongholds in communities and content.
I believe that the future comes in the combinations of niche audiences with "something else". The big social networks were great to introduce us to the concept, but the real use is in people belonging to different groups of focused interests. In terms of the "something else," I think many of these new smaller networks will stem out of mashing up current social networks. It'll be interesting.