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It's time for "the next big thing"

Things are changing on the internet.

Facebook (at least in the UK) has apparently been hit with a sudden decline in numbers, with reports that 600,000 Britons seem to have turned away from the world's largest social network.

Over at Instagram they're trying to talk down the fact that they lost nearly half their users in a single month.

There are some who even suggest that Twitter is now getting past its best-by date.

On the hardware side - the iPhone is no longer flavour de jour and some media stories hint at unexpectedly reduced sales volumes due to saturation of the market.

Yes, the time is ripe for "the next big thing" (TNBT).

So just what will it take to woo all those ex-Facebookers, Instagrammers and deTweeted Net users?

What fresh, exciting, enticing, addictive and fun-filled "new thing" will appear, as if by magic, and become an overnight success -- making someone or some group of people very wealthy in the process?

Ah... if only *I* had the answer!

What is it that people are looking for that isn't already available?

Well we're awash with social networks and the tools that support them so I don't think TNBT will be a bigger or better version of Facebook.

People are obviously getting tired of posting their photos and having them aged by 40 years with the click of a mouse - so don't look for an image-sharing/editing service to become super-hot.

MegaKey might deliver a useful service for those who have been scared off of P2P networks by the threats of the recording and music studios - but it won't become the biggest thing on the Net -- lawyers will see to that.

No, what's needed is something that is either completely new -- or a brilliant synergy of all that has been good to date.

Certainly, it will involve a degree of social networking -- after all, that's what the internet is best at: connecting people to each other.

Probably, it will involve a measure of gaming or some other competitive element that will allow people to pit themselves against others and demonstrate their prowess in some way, shape or form.

It's also likely that it will be highly geared to the mobile/tablet marketplace -- meaning it will work best with small but frequent interactions.

Given the size of the Chinese market, and the popularity of gambling, there could be some merit to building in some form of chance-based mechanism that produces payouts to lucky users.

And commerce will likely play a key role -- if the developers of such a system want to actually make some money out of it.

Maybe I ought to dust off my book of "million dollar ideas" and see if any of the entries have now reached their window of opportunity.

Let's hear from users though. What features and functions would you see as being important to TNBT? Do you have any really cool ideas?

Or have we just run out of TNBTs on the Net. Was social networking "it" as far as fads and "big things" go?

Will the future of the Net simply be delivering a range of services in a sane and measured way. Are the days of Facebook fanaticism and "totally Twitter" gone forever?

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