"But social networking, like message boards, is now getting baked into vertical content sites as a mechanism to help drive user generated content"

GTC rolln
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I'm definitely in agreement with Jeremy Liew in his predictions for 2007 about Social Networking and I'd add that in most of these categories (travel, small business etc), the Local element is very important. It's all about fostering the community to create the high value reviews.

Jeremy Liew : "Social Networking finally becomes a feature. I think it will be hard for new broad based social networks to emerge; the existing networks are strong and good and are serving their users reasonably well. But social networking, like message boards, is now getting baked into vertical content sites as a mechanism to help drive user generated content. Yelp uses a core of social networking to incent its Yelp Elite and other core users to write local reviews which then benefit any user of the site. Youtube absolutely uses social networking to reward video contributors. Tripadvisor reviewers get compliments and get told how useful their reviews are, as do Amazon book reviewers. Flickr has always had a core of social networking and profiles for regular photo contributors. Others are doing this in other verticals, including Flixster in movies, Kongregate in flash games, and many more. These are not social networking sites per se - they are city guide sites, or video sites, or travel sites, or book sites, or photosites. You can enjoy the specific content without ever joining the network, or even being aware of it, but the social network reward mechanisms are incenting the power users to contribute the content that we all benefit from. Watch this space."