Everything Social, all at Once

If social media makes your head hurt, here's an interesting way to conceptualise/categorise the whole field. Brian Solis has been renewing this impressive diagram each year since 2008. His diagram ranges far beyond Facebook and Twitter, encompassing photo sharing, crowdsourcing, business networking, location based services, social curation, service networks, social fitness and much more. Not only does it show a vast and increasingly influential array of services, it might help developers intent on trailblazing new subdomains within the social sphere.

Social Networks for Private People

If you like communicating with your friends and family online but also like your privacy, Glassboard might be a viable alternative to Facebook. As stated on their home page, "Glassboard has no privacy settings — because everything is private. It’s that easy." Those in your selected network can share as per a 'normal' social network, but without the exhibitionist posing for the rest of the world. Other recent options in this space include everyme and Path. Because, let's face it, when boiled down to essentials, you are just an abstract piece of potential advertising revenue for Google or Facebook, whatever the high flown rhetoric used to sell such services.