What MySpace does ok, Facebook does better. What Twitter does ok, Jaiku does better (and even Facbook does ok).

I think the biggest problem a lot of new web ventures are having (or are going to have), is that there's a huge overlap between rival platforms: Whereas previously technologies like Blogger, Wordpress, Movable Type etc all did much the same thing (just with different levels of success), there was little need for each platform to talk to each other - it was all just published on the web for everyone to see.

Now though everything's about networks and communities, but with a focus on communities within specific platforms - My Myspace account can't talk to my Facebook account. If I have a twitter account I still have to incessantly tell Jaiku and Facebook What I'm Doing.

This is all exacerbated by the proliferation of new apps which do the same as the old one, but a little bit better. As soon as you've got to grips with one cool new toy, it's replaced by another.

Until these platforms open up a little more (and sure, Facebook is welcoming new developers, but with fairly strict Ts and Cs) then they can only have a limited lifespan. If startups want to be around for the long haul, they need to open up properly, to talk to each other easily.

Either that, or the Next Big Thing will be a site which pulls every kind of social app you could use together, easily, in one place. Bloglines for the myspace generation if you like.

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