Innovation is our regular column that highlights emerging technological ideas and where they may lead
Social networking sites are the culmination of the internet revolution, and there鈥檚 not much innovation left to come online. So said , co-founder of web payments service PayPal, at a discussion at the on Monday.
The event provided a glimpse of where he and other Silicon Valley luminaries think social networks are taking us next.
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Thiel, one of the first investors in Facebook, suggested the best way to think about the sector鈥檚 future is to ask, 鈥淲here in the history of social networking are we?鈥� His answer: We鈥檙e near the end.
鈥淚 believe that the computer age culminated in the internet, the internet culminated in social networks, and that we鈥檒l have to look extremely far afield for what is next,鈥� he said.
While the web and social networks will continue to exist, true innovation will appear elsewhere, he said. 鈥淢y view is that the last wave of innovation is social networks, and that after that you have to go back to the science fiction of the 1950s for what鈥檚 next.鈥�
The new email
Others on the panel didn鈥檛 go so far. But there was a consensus that the basic way for social networks to work is established, will stay the same and will become ubiquitous, much like email.
鈥淔acebook will replace email,鈥� as the dominant method of electronic communication, predicted , a founding board member of Google.
But he went on to predict that social networking will in future be centred on cellphones, not static machines. 鈥淢obile internet is the next major computing cycle,鈥� he said, pointing to the rapid growth of both mobile web use and ownership of internet-capable devices.
Future products
, founder of professional social network LinkedIn, agreed that there is more social-networking history to come.
鈥淲hat鈥檚 interesting is that everyone is now present with their real identities and relationships. We鈥檙e only just seeing how people lead these things into their lives.鈥� Future innovation will involve using the information people put into them, he predicts.
鈥淲e鈥檙e all generating massive amounts of data that will generate interesting applications,鈥� said Hoffman. Predicting future economic trends, something Google has done using search queries, is one possibility. 鈥淵ou may get recommendations of who you should meet professionally, or which career path you should take.鈥�
Changing the world
Twitter co-founder insisted that Twitter 鈥渋sn鈥檛 a social network鈥� 鈥� a definition some would question. For him, the interesting thing about the future of social networking is how it will change people and societies.
鈥淭here鈥檚 a kind of alchemy that takes place. When you move on from sharing with just a few friends on email there鈥檚 all this information that takes on a whole new value.鈥� Stone thinks Twitter and other sites that make communication more public can genuinely change human behaviour for the better.
鈥淲hen people are more open, they鈥檙e more engaged, and they tend to be more empathetic. They become more of a global citizen.鈥� Technology that promotes open communication will help us 鈥渕ove forward as a species鈥�, he said.
Read previous Innovation columns: The dizzying ambition of Wolfram Alpha, Can technology persuade us to stop trashing the planet?, Ultimate jukebox is next step in net music, You Facebook, you Tweet, now lifelog, The psychology of Google Wave, Inside Sony鈥檚 broadcast lab, Classic computers on the danger list, Are we ready for the Autonomous Age?, Why do users fawn over Twitter鈥檚 failings?.
