Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

Velvet Rope Social Networks
Everyone's jumping onto Facebook and Twitter, and all the early adopters are getting antsy. Professionals are still asking, "What's the point?" Maybe they're not wrong. Having a private social network, where there's some kind of gating factor, a velvet rope like those you see at swanky night clubs, might be the next big thing.

Location-Based Media Gets Bigger
There are sites like BrightKite and Loopt and many more that offer location-based social opportunities. What comes next is when people discover the secrets of the annotated world--that experience where our mobile devices give us a whole new layer of information and interaction that others not connected to the service won't know exists.

A Thousand Twitters
I see the opportunity for fast-paced, short-length messaging to catch on in several more targeted opportunities. Imagine visiting the IRS and getting some help with your tax returns via brief, 140 character messages. Imagine a city of concierges tweeting messages about where you can spend your time (and your money). It's already here in the big soupy Twitter, but letting us take our logon credentials to several small Twitters is where things will get interesting.

Video Grows Up
This one's a stretch, but we did lots of video in 2007, and that's a decade after the last time we said Internet video was going to take over the world. I think we're getting closer to the blend between conversational media (shooting video for friends to consume) and less-than-professional media, which is to say, the stuff made from decent cameras shot by pro-am video types, but not yet the old-fashioned, grown-up camera work.

Take all my recommendations with a grain of salt. My ability to predict is relegated to lottery tickets and next potential winners of American Idol. That said, these aren't especially far afield from what could happen. In all of the above, it's more likely that a very disruptive technology will capture us the way Twitter did three years ago. We're due.

In the interim, realize that your mission in all this is to do what these tools have started for us: connect with people in meaningful ways. Everything else will figure itself out. Just get connected and make relationships. That's the trick.

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About the Author: Chris Brogan is a blogger and consultant on social media; is cofounder of PodCamp, a new media conference series; and coauthor of Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust..