What’s Next in Social Networking After Facebook?

Reed Landry took it personally when I wrote about the decline of  the Washington-based private social network,  Late Night Shots a few months ago, and lashed out at me. It’s got to be tough to see your social networking site not do as well as it once was, but he’s in good company. As Monica Hesse’s article in today’s Washington Post on Facebook and Social Networking points out, consumers are always after “the next big thing.”

After Friendster, MySpace, LateNightShots, and ASmallWorld, Facebook reigns as the Social Network of choice with over 300 million users. Facebook is one of the top websites in the world, and are finally making a profit. Hesse writes that Facebook seems “dead.” She needs to friend some of my friends, or something, because to me Facebook is very much alive. I get a ridiculous number of invitations, friend requests, messages and comments each day.  Although, it’s much more mainstream than it once was, and has lost the cool factor, it’s a useful tool that people rely on.

In my opinion, Facebook is going to last. Millions of people have invested their time into making connections, uploading photos, and such. They aren’t going to throw all that away to move to a new site. I suspect that it would be very dificult at this point for a new social network to compete with Facebook, especially since making improvements to Facebook’s existing technology is relatively easy to do. What’s next in social networking after Facebook? A better Facebook, through continual improvements and innovation. 

- Miss A