It’s been quite a year for social web technologies — blogs, social networks, and online video broke into the mainstream consciousness, even earning a tip from Time Magazine for person of the year. And, this has definitely been reflected in the 9 months that BuzzShout has been online.

Top categories

The top company categories for BuzzShout from this year are:

1. Social Networking (175)
2. Blogs (151)
3. Photos (110)
4. Listings (103)
5. Videos (102)
6. Bookmarking (94)
7. Reviews (93)

I really wasn’t kidding when I said that companies are springing up all over the place. For some the weeks, I was literally hearing about company launches on a daily basis. The Web 2.0 bubble is growing, and with it, we’re seeing a glut of companies that are all doing very similar things.

Go ahead, try browsing any one of the top categories for a glimpse of the ever crowding spaces.

Growing trends

Some trends have planted their seeds this year, and should begin to blossom in 2007. These include:

• Sharing what you wear — Companies like Shoutfit and StyleFeeder are leading the way for social fashion sharing and trendspotting.
• Getting paid for social media content — Digital Journal, Social Roots, and Yepic hope to actually pay the person of the year, You, for all that social media effort.
• Blog and news aggregating — TechMeme, Tailrank, and Megite have yet to garner mainstream attention. However, as blogs continue to grow in popularity, these aggregators will become increasingly important as a tool to filter out the wheat from the chaff.

Predictions

2006 really was a wild ride, full of mashups, agile development, and quick hacks. In contrast, 2007 should bring a more mature look at Web 2.0 (and, I daresay, Web 3.0). In particular, we’ll be seeing a lot more focus on creating fully functional web applications, and not just simple tools.

I expect 2007 to bring a healthy shake up of existing companies. There are just too many social networking and video sites to be sustainable. We’ll probably start seeing this happen in the latter part of next year, as major players get bought out or go big on their own.

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Categories - Trends, Flickr |