A year or so ago, Facebook unveiled something that has radically changed the landscape of the web and social networking sites in particular. As the first major and tightly integrated social network application platform (SNAP) to hit the market, Facebook was able to shift our expectations from what we had previously expected to get from a social site to something with theoretically endless possibilities. What emerged next, I don’t think even facebook had the foresight to predict.

I have a theory, and its that facebook didn’t want or expect the platform to become what it has. They had something else entirely in mind when they built it, and the upcoming changes to the metrics/engagement rules are proof of their original mindset. Facebook didn’t want disposable apps, they wanted people to add value, real value to the platform. Facebook was looking for people to find new ways to tie in the social graph data they were offering into new and useful tools. Facebook refers to itself as a social utility, not a network, and what does a utility do? It powers things. So what does facebook want to do? Power the web through social connections and relationships.

So what does the next generation of the platform have in store for us? Well to me it seems like they have taken a long hard look at the existing app usage, proliferation, and made a decision; one that many will find unpleasant. Facebook wants us to build things that improve upon their users lives: social shopping, social search, social recommendations, and maybe social gaming. Any activity that is improved by having your friends around is one that facebook wants to be a part of. So we’ll probably see this stuff percolating into existing sites as they adapt, but more than likely people will heed this advice and start building new sites that capitalize on it. And the apps in facebook doing this will ultimately be rewarded by Facebook through promotion and more functionality.

Now bear in mind that this is all my own personal opinion, I haven’t asked any of my friends at facebook about it. It is all based on my observations, and what I would want if I was in facebook’s position. So what are you waiting for? The social revolution awaits!

Around this time last year I posted my predictions for 2007, and in the process tagged a few folks to do the same. This year after reviewing my predictions, I’ve decided to reformat the way my predictions for 2008 are proposed. On one hand I want them to be more accesible, I also want to be able to expand upon them a bit more. So without further ado, here is the basics of what I think is going to happen in 2008.

1. Measurement will explode. Analytics of sites, communities, behaviors, patterns, relationships, and activities will reach everyone and everywhere. The amount of data to be crunched and processed will be immense. The companies with the ability to relate the data and crunch it effectively and efficiently will be in a great position.
2. Social networks will continue to evolve. If you thought a lot of people’s attention was consumed by SocNets in 2007, you haven’t seen anything yet.
   1. Portability of your social graph and identity will emerge in LATE 08, not earlier. It won’t be driven by the major sites, but by the ecosystem (app developers, ad networks, etc.)
   2. OpenID in its current incarnation won’t be widely used. It WILL be widely supported though by the third quarter. Its still too geeky for average users.
   3. Ecosystem around Facebook will break $100 Million in revenue for the year. This is money the apps hooked into FB will generate.
   4. Ecosystem for apps hooked into MySpace will be big, but RPM on these pages will hover around 10% of facebook apps (data is poor, connections poor, and closeknit nature of the myspace graph will slow app growth here).
   5. OpenSocial Economy will be higher than myspace on a RPM, but significantly lower than Facebook. Reasons being: weaker connections (spam), inactivity rates of users, fewer US based customers.
   6. Combined the SocialApp Economy will push 200+Million. App installs will break a billion.
3. Social Networking Application Platforms will mature. As will the apps on them.
4. Communication streams will be evolving. Think of everyone having a personal activity RSS feed that everyone can integrate with. Activity feed and news feed for individuals = same thing.
5. Twitter will grow over a million active. The ecosystem here is what’s interesting. Twitter itself will provide white label tools for businesses, interesting marketing opportunities, and grow its revenue substantially. They will announce profitability at the END of 2008, when they are bought by Yahoo or Microsoft. AOL could be a sleeper pairing too.
   1. Twitter’s ecosystem will support a handful of companies financially. People who make smart moves out of the SMS tools and the social graph tools.
6. White label SocNet software will come out that supports FBML or OpenSocial out of the box. Think wordpress for social networks (Elgg is only one I know of). Maybe Ning will open source itself completely.
7. Social Ads will evolve. Beacon was scary at first, but once its opt-in, and sites all over can participate, they will explode. Beacon like services will also be all over the place. Lookery is a great example. Scott Rafer is a very clever guy, don’t know him personally, but he seems to be keen on putting the pieces of this social graph together. (Compete, MyBlogLog, Lookery) (Hey Scott, shoot me an email, we should talk ).
8. Google will buy about 8 or 9 companies. Microsoft 6. Yahoo 4. AOL 4. IAC 3.
   1. We will see some amazing stuff from these companies past purchases finally piecing together. One thing we’ll see is the emergence of Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL fighting like crazy to dominate behavioral targeting of advertising. Combined the three amigos there have activity profiles on hundreds of millions of people. Look to Fox to try and partner with one of them to monetize MySpace/foxbusines/foxsports/etc. better.
9. The way we look at interactions on the web will change. Networking will also change (keep an eye on LinkedIn, I see them evolving their business model to provide more services and value with their data, they have the worlds best resume/work history data of anyone). APML is worth watching too.
10. I expect to see a new term emerge for what would be Web 3.0. If web 1.0 was the connections between documents (hyperlinks), web2.0 the facilitation of users creating those documents, then web 3.0 will be the connections between people. SocialWeb sounds simple and decent for this evolutionary phase.

What do you think?

To follow up my post from December of 2006, here are the results:

“Social media” will evolve. Much the same way we have thousands of pro bloggers worldwide, we will have lots of people earning their living from social media. New ways of earning income will abound, look for the first paid plugs in a videocast, or more importantly, the first paid PRODUCT placement. Think Lonelygirl15 starts drinking lots of diet coke for a reason?

This was sort of right. Lots of growth in social media professionals. More bloggers living on the web, and video content. I also think we saw a growth in paid placement, although not overt, and I can’t back that up with figures

Social marketing will explode. The number of videos online will triple, but the number of ads attached to those videos will rise by 10x. Who this is good for: interactive agencies, media planners, video production companies, CDNs, video sites, YOU.

Well this has been a good year for companies like videoegg, youtube, revver, blip, etc. but my social marketing term should have been redefined. Social ads….

Podcasting will change. Gone will be the 30 minute long weekly shows in favor of 5-10 minute segments which can be better monetized, and better distributed. People have ADD as a collective whole, and don’t want to listen to poorly edited talk radio.

I think shorter content has grown, but really, podcasting has lost a lot of its hype, and is much the reason for us never releasing castvertising.com despite it being finished for 6 months.

Online advertising will grow more than experts think. Google will post huge gains, but the efficiencies brought to light by Yahoo’s Panama search marketing platform, and MSN adcenter, and I’m guessing AOL will have something neat too, will all change the ways that people buy ads. I’m betting ebay will partner with yahoo or aol on a method to track CPA ads better (yahoo/aol sell the ads, track the ads, and then people buy through paypal, and use skype to speak to the merchant).

If you count all the aquisitions, then this was an amazing year onthis front. Behavioral targeting was a huge buying zone in 07, and we’ll see the fruits of this frenzy in 08.

Widgets, widgets, widgets. 2007 is going to see a number of new delivery methods for widgets, more useful widgets will emerge. We’re already seeing the emergence of video chat and regular chat widgets making any site a lounge of sorts. My guess: widgets will further decentralize the web. We’ll also see a growth in widgets on blogs, and social sites. We might want to look for a social widget that ties into a user’s browser, so they can tell people where they are hanging out on the web, or tie together their countless social networking accounts.

Oh man. if you count the facebook platform as a widget platform, then I knocked this one out of the park. this is only going to get bigger in 2008.

Social Networking will change. I think we’re going to see the vertical encompass everything social networks morph to more topic oriented sites. People like to socialize with other like minded individuals. Whomever can capitalize on this, and tie together a few smart hubs will make some decent money. Remember its easier to market to niches than to everyone at once.

Ning hosting over 100,000 networks is proof of this. Emergence of niche network sites that are platform independent of sites like ning have been positive as well.

Smart startups will embrace SEO, PPC, SMO, SMM and the other marketing venues. As people start their search more and more on search engines and information hubs (or portals), people will need you to prepare yourself to be found by them. You can’t just cross your fingers and hope people stumble upon your site.

I think I was super right in this one. case in point two local startups here in Miami doing really smart things on the SEO side: Condo.com and Healthcare.com. They are positioning themselves to own their categories/verticals, and one big key is their smart search positioning.

More events outside of the valley will emerge. Wouldn’t you rather go to Miami in the winter?
Well the future of web design in new york, web connections north in vancouver, webmaster jam in dallas, blog conferences in orlando, chicago, and other cities all indicate growth is going on in other places outside the valley. Even more events will popup outside the valley in 2008.

Web+ will be the evolution of web2.0
This was basically me scratching my own back…