Not sure if there is something on the horizon that will clean the board of all of the other players, certainly services like Ning are having an impact on the social networking scene - by making the technology accessible to non-programmers. One of my competitors is a Ning based site, and quite frankly, if Ning didn't exist, then nor would their site, as they are not programmers. The big players are simply increasing market share by expanding their market - to Joe Public, not sure that they are in see more direct competition with companies like Boonex - as after all, if you want a hook in the marketplace - you use something different from what everyone else is using. The main thing I can see is that some features introduced by these other services will filter down into mods / features for companies like Dolphin - as they have done already - after all, everyone wants a site like "facetubespacewhatever".

I think that the big developments / advancements are related to browser and language abilities - this is certainly true of AJAX, and the effect that this has had on user interaction, server - browser communication was not possible in this way a few years back - this is the WEB 2.0 that we hear so much about. Next steps are probably related to increased support for mobile devices - mobile device screens are increasing in size and resolution, mobile browser capability is also getting better, and as HL quite rightly pointed out - the phone is now seen as an extension of modern life.

2000 char limit...