Post Facebook Social Media:8 Trends to Watch

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As Social Networks evolve, here's what we're on the lookout for.

1. More Location Awareness: Thanks to mobile devices, location based social networks like Foursquare, GoWalla, Brightkite, CitySense, GyPSii, Pelago (Whrrl),Loopt are coming on strong.Members becometrackable, reachable nodes on a mobile network, leaving critical tips and information as they move from place to place.That information becomes discoverable in real time, which has big implications for organizations.It also enable on and offline crossovers in new ways: "my network in the neighborhood".Further, it's not tied to any online platform/destination site.The only destination site is the mobile device.Read our 10/27/09 write up on leading geo aware platforms.

2.More Filtered: The next generation of services will allow for decreasing/increasing/varied circles of concern- old pals, new acquaintances- not the black and white "followers" and "friends" paradigm of the current dominant services.

3.More Imminent and Pervasive:In addition to mobile devices and destination sites, we'll see social networks connected on the TV, in the Nav system- kind of like surround sound for all connections- enabling deep conversation.

4.More B2B focused: We see more sites like Sermo, a physician and Medical Industry targeted site, and business focused sites with Facebook levels of interactivity emerging. Rather than individual employees connecting, we see business identity centric sites emerging to enable B2B transactions, as well as direct deal making between service providers on sites such as Biznik or StartUp Nation.

5.More Profitable:The next generation of the social web will allow for greater shared financial gain- mass affiliation- think MLM online.We see things like profit sharing with the audience, barter and SWOP emerging.We also see targeted community owners letting people participate, but requiring businesses to pay access charges to convene panels, surveys and discussion groups from curated memberships.

6.More Directed: We see Social Media becoming more action focused- whether SWAT team like political actions, opportunistic collective buying (Groupon?),or the wonderful MeetUp.Social nets will help more people create global actions together.

7.More Gated: In an effort to filter the riffraff, we see more private club atmospheres and invitation only, curated memberships coming-- A Small World, Affluence.

8.More Specialized:There are thousands of sites in every vertical with large groups of participants- the death of vertical networks just never happened.There are almost 2M goth subculture members at VampireFreaks, and 1.2M mamas at CafeMom- or the hundreds of thousands of real estate pros at ActiveRain.com, or the sports freaks at FanIQ or ESPN, or Mallika Chopra's lifestyle site Intent.If you've got a passion for something, the level of interactivity and comunity on the big sites doesn't satisfy (that's one reason we're betting on social networking platform ning).

It's just now getting interesting.