The Future of Social Networking

Ever since the Web2.0 phenomenon, the favorite flavor of the current technology trend (at least in the consumer Internet space) has without question been social networking. Technology pundits (despite a fair share of detractors) have harped ad infinitum and ad nauseam on how the "read-write Web (or Web 2.0)" is going to revolutionize the Internet. Now that people (entrepreneurs, geeks, capitalists, professionals, businessmen, netizens, etc.) are all busy either churning out or forming social networks, where is the trend headed? What is social networking going to morph into?

Segmentation
Several bloggers have written about the segmentation of social networking (Alex Iskold; Wilhelm; etc.). Popular social networking sites are positioned to serve different segments of society. Common approaches of differentiation include media types (horizontal - e.g., Flickr for photos), industry verticals (vertical - e.g., stockpickr for finance), geographies (e.g,. Mixi in Japan), interests (e.g, Dogster for dog-owners), and myriad others.

Fragmentation
Now, each of us has a profile consisting of hundreds of attributes - sex, age, marital status, race, color, religion, caste, language, city, state, region, country, education, profession, employment, interests, hobbies, likes, dislikes, etc. So, eventually would I be required to network in a 100 different sites to reach out to other people who share my profile in some way?

So, with the ongoing fragmentation, when will people get overdosed on social networking? When will people get sick of splitting themselves into multiple user-IDs and passwords in the virtual world? I would say sooner than you think.

Deja Vu
The origin of social networking applications can be traced to the "online groups" and "forums" phenomena. While online groups are primarily geared towards private groups, forums are better geared for public (published) conversations. Social networks somehow appear to me to weld the two concepts together. Key differences though are that social networks enable non-disruptive public conversations and content-centric conversations. The icing on the cake is the democratization of the network with ratings and recommendations.

Analyzing the amoebic explosion of social networking sites, I cannot help drawing a parallel with the historical lessons of the previous boom (and the subsequent bust). Indeed, what we are witnessing today in the C2C (consumer-to-consumer) or P2P (peer-to-peer) space of "social networks" seems to be very similar to that seen in the 1990s in the B2C (and even B2B) realm. The social networking fragmentation is eerily similar to the online shopping sites of Web1.0. The companies that survived the earlier bust were those that consolidated quickly and offered one-stop services in their respective spaces.

Future
The exponential mushrooming of social networking sites is the result of the mad scramble for establishing niches in Web2.0. It is my belief that eventually sanity has to take over and the space has to witness convergence. Indeed, the future of social networking lies in the consolidation of the space.

Disclosure: I am a co-founder of Cylive.