A post on gigaom.comÂ? by Robert Young bring up an interesting point about the future ofÂ? media content. In the last few years, several major companies have made moves to take control of the mainstream media content, Â? and now, it seems, the major TV networks are making their own moves. Major TV networks like ABC and Fox (both mentioned in the article) have increased their web presence, providing their shows with ads/commercials on their websites. In the near future, we could see a very big shift in the production and distribution of media content and the creation of two very separate “poles” - commercial and independent media.

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Silent Rob and I recently started an ambitious project to review many of the major social networking sites in the next few weeks. Part of it is strictly personal interest, but there is a certain “research” aspect of it as well. Of course the point of a social networking website is to make contacts. At this point, net-friends and dating/hooking-up seem to be the majority of contacts that come from these sites, and it does become important to wonder, can these sites ever create real-world, business or industryÂ? contacts, or does it really take away from being social and actually meeting people.Â?

One of my first thoughts was of Meetup. A different spin on a social networking site, Meetup actually arranges real meetings - quite an amazing concept on the web. It seems the site has been around for about four years andÂ? has a couple million members, but I think it has an interesting angle to work.

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Google has finally released their Google Calendar application. After signing in and quickly navigating through the program, it is obvious that it is a beta version. Some of the bugs are so significant, that I even wonder why it was released - the add an item feature is fairly weak (you can’t save some updates!), and thereÂ? doesn’t seem to be aÂ? way to make a recurring event (like a weekly practice). Regardless, there are two main points that I’d like to make about the release.

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When online maps started to become popular on the net, the two main players were MapQuest and Yahoo! Maps. For the most part, these two dominated the online map scene. In early 2005, Google Maps was announced, and it almost immediately blew the competition out of the water. Using an AjaXSLT framwork, the drag-and-drop technology took online maps to a whole new level of user interactiion.Â? With the release of Google Earth inÂ? mid-2005,Â? new ground was broken again. A free, 3-D rendering, virtual globe program, Google Earth allowed users to view the terrain of sites like the Grand Canyon or Mount Everest as if they were actually there, manipulating all aspects of the view like zoom level and the viewing angle.

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I recently read the article on CNNMoney.com/Business 2.0 magazine about The Next Net 25. The focus of the article was “Web 2.0″ and what it will take to be the next big thing on the Internet. The article looks at 5 different niches on the internet, each with 5 different sites to watch, and they through a curveball into the mix - the “Incumbent to Watch”. The incumbent is always one of the big boys - Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. I’m sure you’ve heard of them. The Social Media section, withÂ? 5 different sites to watch, is probably the most interesting. With the success of MySpace, which has probably been the biggest net-phenomenon ever, and the talk of a $2B pricetag on Facebook, it would seem this is the most lucrative area for a startup, but likely the most competitive. Although Tagworld had a lot of hype when it first came out, I think YouTube (or the incumbent Yahoo!) will be the best bet for something extraordinary in the group.

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