Social networking, like a lot of other business segments, is starting to encompass lots of other companies doing similar things. Increasingly, social networking is about finding people with similar interests, backgrounds, or personal attributes (race, religion, disease/disability) and getting them to talk/share stuff with each other. What's driving startups is that they're going after specific groups/markets in the hope of getting enough of them together so they click on an ad every once and a while on the web site.

The best example I can think of that goes after a specific group is Dogster. Dogster was started as a joke by someone who created the site over a weekend (at least that's the story I heard). Much to the designer's surprise, people really wanted to talk with other people about their dogs. Dogster has since raised some money and is getting revenue from sponsorships. Woof!

Increasingly, people/groups will just put these networks together themselves instead of relying on a business to do it for them. Ning has been working hard and has a bunch of social networks already up and running. They make it easy for people to put together all the components (forums, photo albums, video, etc.).

Plug: Mobile Monday Boston will be having its next meeting on Sept. 17 to discuss mobile social networking. A number of companies will be presenting (including mine - padpaw.net).

The problem I see facing social networking startups in general is that they are only useful when there are others using it. You have to reach a "critical mass" to be desirable, and getting there is difficult when there are already other bigger social networks with more people. Why would someone join a new social network when they can just join facebook and be connected with more people? The new features would need to be compelling enough for the earliest users to sign up. Because people are intrinsically lazy, those features need be extremely compelling. I think the evolement in this space will stem from new ways that social networking is used rather than simply providing niche slants on existing ideas.

I agree that people are lazy. The user acquisition by these new social networks is far more intrusive. Asking for gmail, linkedin, yahoo, your-favourite-mail-app passwords, and then spamming all. i receive 5 such invitations daily, which are part of intrusive practices. With this, they build up users and seek more funding, giving a false impressions that they are "popular" amongst people.

They should improve features, but as of now , features are not visible. Most of them are just theme based social networks. Which makes me inquisitive about the number of social networks each user joins on an average.

I think that the answer to the future of social networking websites is somewhere between the two you present. It could still explore a million different niches, and Ning is enabling that (Think the long tail!). On the other hand, social networks should begin to offer more than keeping track of friends, their lives, our own lives, and the overlapping areas like events and blog posts.

Totally agree. Social networking sites are only one of hundreds of ways people want the Internet to process information for them.