Great post and comments on prospects of vertical social networks. These are social networks that revolve around a specific interest groups, such as bikers, running enthusiasts, etc. The article argues that this is the direction in which social networks will evolve, and naturally, users will be part of multiple social networks. This leads to a need for aggregation and single-profile platforms for social networks.

Agree with most of the stuff thats said in here. One more addition — As this happens, I think the ability for social networks to easily digest content from over the web, and provide distribution/syndication widgets to sites all over the web will become critical. And this could be a key differentiator — how does a social network integrate with www? Today, some social networks have their own blogs, or provide rss readers to individual users, but I haven’t seen something that does a good job of integrating the web content well into the network. Similarly, I haven’t seen something compelling that lets you export out whatever is happening inside the network to rest of www.

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