The Facebook IPO is melting, LinkedIn is stagnant, and Twitter is under fire by developers. New platforms like Medium, Branch, Zerply Converse, and Svbtle are popping up everywhere, with an entirely new model for social interaction.

Instead of creating profiles, "The new social" seems to be more content-focused. Zerply and Branch have been pushing really hard on getting designers/devs/writers to talk about nontrivial industry issues, and Svbtle is curating some of the best writing in the world. HN and Reddit help everyone else discover awesome content across the world.

It begs the question – where is social media going? What will the landscape look like in two years? What are the advantages or disadvantages from this radical change?

I think as time goes by, we find out we have a wider bandwidth for social network than what we previously thought. So we started out with only Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and were already feeling overwhelmed.

But as we adapted, we started realising that there was room for more specialised networks with different interactions.

So I think the future is a social network landscape more similar to the press: just like there are lots of different magazines, some of them even covering the same topic, there will be lots of different social networks, each with their own target and purpose.

The key to make this work is for new entrants to piggy-back on established players. Branch is a perfect example of that with their Twitter integration.

The idea of more specific networks is very attractive, but I would prefer that those knock out the huge players, or at least pressure the huge networks to support fragmentation better. If Facebook could make which networks (though not necessarily location or work based ones) you are a part of more tangible, for instance, I think that would be great for community.

If smaller networks could add interoperability for contact management and inter-communications (a bit of generic xml with contacts, about, image), so that you have the same rolodex everywhere, great. Then you can opt for a more permanent and engaged set of behaviors on, say, Branch.

Allow that same generic generic contact to tap into social publishing sites, and you're set.

This is a great question, Sacha. Thanks for convening all of us. I wrote up some extended thoughts on Medium and have shared a link to them here. I hope they resonate with you all.

I totally agree with the idea that the Internet is content-driven.

I think we all got bored with "this is me" and have moved on to "this is what I do and this is what I have to say". It's more about generating a quality voice over establishing a simple "presence".

Now, you do have your outliers. Your "old world", MySpace-area users who are focused on a bigger social footprint. But these users are phasing out and being shoved aside, and on cases like Tumblr, forced out.

I like where your head is at, @Josh. So long as a site's community knows where they want to go, why not have the conversation somewhere better suited to handling it? Save readers the trouble of loading and having to see all those comments in the first place.

As for liquidity, I agree and I'm sure you believe in it, but where's Branch search so I can find what I'm looking for? As of now I have to do site:branch.com X to find out if a conversation exists and I'm stepping on somebody's toes by reposting (at least for now, while it's in limited release).

I've had the unusual opportunity to manage the entry of a 1,000 year old institution to social media. Becoming actively involved with customers across all the various channels marks an evolutionary step in this company's history. It's been fun and I've learned that it's not about platforms, channels, or even content...it's about relationships and people and personalities. A successful social network will need to facilitate the expression of individualism, something Myspace had for a while, and which was lost when the world migrated to Facebook en masse. I can definitely see the future being in interoperable sub-networks that tap into the power and stability of the super-networks.

Royal Mint, it's great to hear you guys engaging, but I think your history is a little out of order. I don't see how Facebook facilitated individualism initially. In the beginning, it was an exclusive platform that didn't allow nearly as much personal expression. It slowly opened up more and more people, until it was fully public.

By then it was easy enough to get in anyway, and people wanted it because exclusivity already attracted enough people for a solid network effect. Individualism comes back to the very thing that's falling out of fashion - 'my personal website'. The landscape is changing, so where's it going?

I think that's what I said Zack...Facebook throttled the individualism that Myspace allowed. At the time it made sense...Myspace was out of control and became frustrating to use, Facebook was lean and functional in comparison. Now, in a more mature environment, I think it's time to build tools for individualism back in.

Understood. But doesn't that mass migration suggest that individualism was less important than functionality - as in platform? And isn't Facebook starting to lean toward the bloat that Myspace once had?

Personality and content are important, but individualism? It sounds a bit like a buzzword that paints the wrong picture. People don't care about the cheat sheet of fun facts about me, they want a well-crafted post/tweet/picture. That has individuality in it, but does anybody call that thing they're looking for individualism?

I wouldn't conclude that individualism is less important, just maybe that people are willing to compromise in return for features they need. As for individualism as a buzzword...I hadn't thought of it like that...I was using the term to define 'my' web vs 'our' web, or personal vs social. The future of social = more personal.