It's rather telling that you've set 9 mos. as your time frame. While
that may seem like a long time in the web world, in terms of quality
things that last, that's no time at all to develop and build a
following. I've seen and tried many recent new social platforms and
like others, quickly dismiss most. It's not for lack of trying that
there is no new “It” app on the cover of Time, but I submit that
often the It app of the day is more hype then actual substance. I
think it's much more likely that there is no new Twitter because
these days, politics, ponzi schemes, scandal and healthcare are what
sell e-zines, magazines and newspapers at the moment. Eventually the
tide will swing back to software, if the subject is sexy enough.

As for a rise in superficial, again, that's always been true in the
history of the net and complaining about it is just as old. When
things are new, the audience is small and all the content is fresh
and relevant. Then the doors open, everyone comes in, the
conversations get cyclical, spam invades. People get disillusioned
and look for something new. The reality is that life is full of spam
and irrelevant content. The trick is always how to filter the chaff
from the wheat. That however, is not a problem that can be solved by
the next big thing because it's not a problem new things have. Only
established entities have to face that problem. Why do I stick with
the 3 Social Networks I use the most despite trying so many? Because
they are the ones that constantly come up with ways to stay new and
relevant to me without me having to rebuild the wheel, learn a new
interface or rebuild my content. To me that's the future and is a lot
more interesting than something totally different. Now that a
significant number of us have a history of internet content, the most
likely future is in things that help us easily manage it while also
making it easier to create more. I too am dying to know what that new
thing is. I still don't think that the fact that it's not here yet
means social networking is dead though.

(I don't see many radical differences between StumbleUpon, Digg and
Seesmic to be honest, but then I don't make much use of those sites
and perhaps can not judge them accurately. )

Glad I could help you clarify your thoughts, discussions help me
clarify mine too.

As for your second paragraph, I actually see just the opposite happening. There's a LOT more of the superficial going on, and although it's possible to cut through to the real conversations, how many new people have the patience to do that? There are more twitter tools now to enable conversations (TweetChat for example), but by and large, spur of the moment conversations about everything from work to baseball happen (on my timeline at least) with much less frequency than they used to.

I'll agree with you that the Wal-Mart argument is weak. I apologize for that, I had meant to use a different example (Barnes and Nobles, where they're rebuilding each store so that it looks like all the rest).

My point really didn't come across well here, it's not about specific sites going mainstream. You're right, that's needed.

I have spam filters for twitter (Topify is great for helping to know who to follow and who not to, and TwitChuck will rate anyone you're curious to look up on their spammer potential) and for e-mail of course. But even so, I spend a good chunk of time making sure someone's not a spammer (after making a mistake and getting a DM from someone which started off, “Hey sexy”).

I hope it didn't sound like I'm afraid of the social media landscape changing. If it did, I need to rewrite this. I've loved the changes social media has gone through over the years, from chat rooms (which is where my first online adventures started) to MUDs (the first MMORPGs) to Six Degrees to StumbleUpon, Delicious, Digg, Twitter, etc, etc, etc.

Thanks so much for your thoughts! I appreciate you taking the time to write them and hope I explained what I meant a bit better.