What does the future of social media hold?

Well, let's look at the past and project forward.

For expediency, let's pretend that it all started with blogs.

Blogs

Blogs allow you to say pretty much everything and anything you like with very few constraints.

For the most part it is a one way street. You say what you want without interruption. Some blogs allow comments, but many shut that feature off, because the bulk of comments are spam of one sort or another.

Myspace

Next we see Myspace. Like a blog, but typically shorter posts with more interaction.

Facebook

OK, not really THAT much different, but somewhat shorter posts and more people involved in the conversation.

Twitter

Now we come to the current state of things. On Twitter you can only post 140 characters and there is a ton of interaction.

Future Technology 1

EVERYONE contributes in a series of 1 character posts. Kind of like a game. I post a letter, you post a letter, Bob posts a letter, eventually we get the word "Once". About three weeks in we have "Once upon a toilet seat, the queen of hats ate some purple." Not very compelling to us now, but our ultra attention starved selves of the future (say next Thursday) will eat it up like, well, a big bowl of purple.

Final Technology

Contributions come from everyone who ever lived as well as fictional characters and the odd carrot. Everyone contributes exactly one bit. All these bits eventually add up to something utterly incoherent, but that's OK, because, OH MY GOD ASHTON KUTCHER AND JOHN MAYER RESPONDED TO ME!!!