Previewing What's Next in Social Networks

What’s next for online social networking? A heavy dose of geography, writes David Kirkpatrick in Fortune’s Fast Forward. At a real-life meeting for 100 new-media notables in New York, one hot topic was adding location information to user-driven sites so that “not only will you know what someone is doing online, you’ll know where they are doing it.”

The event itself functioned like a Facebook-esque social site. Organizing web celeb Jeff Pulver gave attendees bags of blank labels with which they could physically “tag” the people around them. And location integration was indeed a central theme: several up-and-coming sites incorporated applications like Google Maps in online interaction. One developer’s motto: “Never be lonely again!” (More internet stories.)