I touched on this in my Commenting 2.0 article a bit, but felt I needed to elaborate on the topic a bit.

Large successful networks today are quickly becoming platforms. Applications are a fine and great example, but the next step? in my very humble yet loud opinion, is networks built on other networks. Essentially, any network with an API (application programming interface) becomes the cloud service layer for niche networks on top to use.

How it works

In Facebook terms (though this is certainly not limited to FB), imagine creating whole community sites around groups. Love that San Pellegrino? How about a site with all those group members that google maps restaurants that serve San Pellegrino over Perrier mineral water?

Lets take it one step further. I like to travel and would like to create a tight community of travelers where people can plan and share trips together, connect, and discuss. No need to create a new profile, Facebook Connect has me covered. I?ll need a trip logging and mapping engine. Dopplr has an API that I can use. I want my users to have cool spaces to upload their photos. Flikr will do that. Vimeo can handle the video. You need to send some uncompressed TIFF image files to a member who asked for a print of that vista? Drop.io allows you to build on top of their platform as well. A simple threaded forum system, a blog upfront interviewing members about their trips? and you have a pretty rocking community powered online destination.

The point I am trying to drive is that this if Twitter is built on Rails and Facebook is really a massive mySQL database (lets keep it simple ? ), then the community sites of tomorrow (in, again, simple terms) are going to be built on Facebook and Twitter as their service layers.

Click “Read More” to see hows this benefits us users and most importantly brand managers seeking to harness this social internet thing.

The user end

This is AWESOME news for users. Data portability + niche communities + features we already use. I no longer need to rewrite every tidbit of information about me or play the copy/paste game. I also don?t have to jump the credibility hoops. It is the iMe (internet me, duh) and these future mashup sites will allow me to express myself online with an unprecedented amount of freedom. Yay!

The business end

Not only do the users benefits, but also companies taking advantage of this will be able to leverage this trend to engage the users with their brand. I can see JetBlue or Virgin creating community sites that integrate ticket ordering with automatic Dopplr and/or Plazes trip creation that feeds to Facebook. Cross syncing Plazes and Dopplr alone is an unmet need that can add value to the user? (C 2009 Gary Sheynkman, thanks).

Crucially, capitalizing on this trend will reduce one of the biggest barriers to entry for advertisers: interruption.

At the browsing level interruption is a pop up ad. Annoying at best, infuriating at worst. At the user experience level interruption is filling out forms and starting over. IT SUCKS. The web offers enough attractions without the need to register.

One of the reasons why Drop.io is growing quickly is because I can come to the page, upload a file, and get a link. No going to my inbox. No verifying anything. No interruption? I can even do it from with a Firefox widget. Ever heard of Instapaper? It doesn’t even need a password!

Heed the insights of these quickly growing services, and you have a great opportunity to create brand equity ? and isn?t that why we are here? :p

Would love to hear some feedback on this. Comment down below, tweet, or shoot me an email, I?d love to hear from you.

For every insightful comment there is always a douchebag or 10 that bashes the author, the idea, or just blabs about something inconsequential and thus kills what has the potential to become a great conversation on the topic.

Some new developments on the interwebs will soon put an end to that though (in my not so humble opinion). People are very brave behind keyboards as long as their face is not attached to their anonymous profile.

In a recent conversation with Taj form WeJetSet I suggested a commenting system that might just avoid the douchebag phenomenon. The recent advent of Facebook Connect allows people to post comments as their authentic selves… at least as authentic as their Facebook profile is.

For example, if I use FB Connect to post a comment along the lines of “This is f-ing stupid” … it will show up on my news feed and my friends will likely comment on this event with something along the lines of “Gary, you are an idiot”. Thus I am less likely to post something really stupid.

A commenting system that allows users to just post from Facebook, Myspace, or Orkut (I do not know if other networks allow this yet) will create an ecosystem on the site made up of people who are accountable to their entire social network for their comments. These days you can even have Twitter posts be pulled in as comments with easy to use Wordpress plugins (see below ). This will certainly not guarantee that people will be insightful, but it will add some authenticity to the posters.

Yes, you are alienating potential readers, but at least you are doing away with the persistent problem of douchebaggary…. And who isn’t on Facebook (or MySpace or Orkut) these days anyway?