The (not so distant) Future of Social Media

No one knows for sure what the social media landscape will look like in the not so distant future. Social media networks are governed by "what's-popular-right-now" principles and its hard to judge what network sites will take off like Facebook and Twitter--and which networks will flunk.

What is clear, though, is that the social media landscape is constantly evolving. Six years ago blogging sites like Livejournal were extremely popular. Livejournal was then replaced by MySpace, which is in turn being phased out by Facebook. Today, sites like Twitter and LinkedIn are digging into Facebook's "market share."

Jonathan Strickland from HowStuffWorks.com believes that social media's continuing evolution will mirror the development of Web 3.0 technologies. Strickland argues that advances in browser and search technologies will allow browsers to compile data and information across a user's entire internet experience.

The Web 3.0 experience may possibly foster the development of one, unified and integrated "profile" to replace the myriad of social networks that users frequent today.

Marshall Sponder (webmetricsguru.com) argues in his online presentation, The Future Of Social Media Monitoring, that social media is evolving everyday. He points to the emergence of free and universally accessible tools like Google Analytics, that empower users with a multitude of important information about their sites and others.

What do you think the social media universe will look like two years from now? How about five years from now?