The next big thing - Not a single social network...

It's pretty obvious that Facebook has lost its charm of novelty by now. Superwalls, vampires and comparison tools aren't as interesting as they were for a few weeks back in 2007.

So what is the next step in social networking? Just as before, most people will continue to use Social networks based on the social site's niche. If you're interested in music, you'll go to a niche music site and communicate with your likes there, if you need to communicate to your real life friends, you'll be using a messenger service, and if you want to stay in touch with school friends you'll use a site as classmates.com.

What people don't want is to communicate to all contacts and friends in the same way. I don't want my professional contacts to see me in a picture drunk and I want to be able to create a online persona in my own niche not influenced on my status in say, High School. I also want to feel special and interesting, which I do on a niche network, but not on a very general network (lets face it, Facebook is as niched and interesting to be part of as the telephone directory). So the online behaviour of people will shift back to the one prior to Facebook.

At the same time Facebook and others has made us very spoiled - networks should be as easy to use as Facebook, people should be as easy to find as on facebook, and third party applications are great, even greater for a niched market.

OpenSocial and other related ventures are the answer - you'll get the best parts of the facebook / myspace phenomena, but you are the one in control. Simplicity with single login, single messaging tools, but different content, third party applications and active friends for each of your network. And even more important, not a single, powerful owner of all aspects of your social life!