Geoff Cook, CEO of myYearbook, wrote a thoughtful piece about the future of social networks in a world dominated by Twitter and Facebook.  He has a unique outlook on the future of social networks and the various forms they take.  Presently, the dominant form is the stream.  Facebook pioneered it with their News Feed and Twitter capitalized on its simplistic presentation and ease of use.  There’s no doubt that Facebook and Twitter are the 800 pound gorillas in the room, but I think there’s more space to innovate than Cook acknowledges.  In his article, he comes to the following conclusion:

There are at least two ways forward for social media in a stream world – even in a stream world dominated today by Facebook and Twitter. You can dedicate yourself to creating applications that play well in the stream, or you can try to come up with a new way to shape the stream itself.

I agree that one way forward is focusing on applications that “play well in the stream.” Zynga is the quintessential example of a company focused on creating applications that successfully leverage the social stream.  Others like Playfish and Playdom have also followed suit.

However, I disagree with Cook’s claim that you need to find a new way to shape the stream itself.  The stream is here to stay.  It’s not going anywhere over the course of the immediate future.  It’s by no means a permanent fixture in the world of social networks, but it’s proven to be a successful model for delivering and consuming information.  Revolutionizing or reshaping the stream in its entirety is a lofty goal, and I don’t think it’s necessary right now.  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

There’s plenty of room for innovation when it comes to the stream.  Facebook is compromised by the fact that the stream is really a flood.  There’s too much information from too many people on the fringe of my social graph.  I just don’t care about 80% of the information I see in my News Feed.  It’s overwhelming and irrelevant a majority of the time. That’s not to say that everyone feels this way.  175 million people log into Facebook everyday.  That’s a huge number or people who derive utility from their News Feed or other stream applications on a daily basis.  However, Facebook’s stream is primarily focused on providing updates in the form of text and photos for your immediate social graph.  They’ve left plenty of wide open spaces to play around and innovate.

Twitter’s stream is much different.  They’ve proven that a model focused on brevity (140 characters) and an open following system (versus Facebook’s mandatory reciprocated following system) can scale.  With Twitter, I can better control the information in my stream by selectively following content providers I find interesting. This helps to provide a much more useful and personally relevant source of data.

Twitter is just one successful iteration of the stream.  Tumblr is doing something unique in the space as well by leveraging the open follow system while creating a platform focused on the curation of mixed media. (Disclaimer: I work for Tumblr.)  It allows for a different type of interactive experience, more engaging on an emotional, aesthetic, sensory, and personal level.  The Tumblr stream, or Dashboard, has become a place for people to socially curate and consume the things they love.

There are plenty of other ways to leverage the stream.  Hot Potato is successfully providing a platform for creating social streams around live events.  Foursqare is focusing on personal activities.  Plancast is trying to do the same thing for future plans.  There’s a rapidly growing segment of emerging startups focused on taking streams and using them to leverage different verticals.  There’s also a handful working on rearranging the presentation, functionality, and applications used to interact in a stream.  The immediate future and growth of the social stream is not about revolutionizing its functionality or interface, but on leveraging niches that provide value to an engaged user base.  As Facebook surpasses 400 million users, it grows increasingly difficult to target and leverage verticals within its ecosystem.  People will gradually move towards streams they find personally appealing and consist of peers who share a common interest (Facebook recognizes this and has brilliantly fostered Facebook Connect as a mechanism to stay relevant and connected).  What’s really interesting is thinking about the unique economies, diverse monetization opportunities, and interactive mechanisms for these streams, but I’ll save that for another post.  It’s an exciting time for the emergence of social platforms, especially those focused on providing unique and relevant utility.